By Alexandra Mayer-Hohdahl/Rome/DPA

A navy seaman hunches down to read a warning that flashes on one screen: an eastbound merchant vessel headed from Malta to Greece was instead headed west.

The officer tracked the green dot marking the ship’s position while contact was made with other authorities to check that nothing illicit was underway.

The case is one example of the dozen maritime anomalies handled on any given day at the operational headquarters of the Italian navy, whose mission to keep the Mediterranean Sea secure has focused over the last eight months on saving the lives of migrants.

Almost 73,690 migrants have been picked up in the central Mediterranean since October, after the drownings of hundreds of migrants spurred Italy to launch a search and rescue operation called Mare Nostrum, or Our Sea in Latin.

That amounts to an average of 270 migrants rescued per day, but as many as 645 migrants have been found squeezed into a single vessel, with many more believed to be waiting to attempt the sea crossing.

Many of the migrants are fleeing violence in conflict-torn countries like Syria, hoping for a better life as asylum seekers in Europe. But the journey over the Mediterranean can prove fatal, with profit-hungry smugglers overloading unsafe boats.

Most of the migrants are men, but the five Italian navy vessels involved in Mare Nostrum, patrolling an area three times the size of Sicily, have also picked up more than 5,000 women and more than 6,000 minors since the launch of the operation.

“When children are put onboard a boat and sent adrift, no civilised nation can just watch,” Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Friday.

But Italy has found it challenging to secure assistance for the operation from other countries. Slovenia has contributed sea patrols, but pleas for the European Union to help pick up the tab for Mare Nostrum have so far gone unanswered.

“For a single member state, it’s absolutely a burden,” Lieutenant Commander Marco Stocco said.

The navy estimates that the operation costs Italy an average of 6mn to 9mn euros ($8mn to 12mn) every month - an expense that, according to Rear Admiral Michele Saponaro, drains funds away from training and other important activities.

“What is evident is that Italy cannot be the only nation supporting this activity,” said Vice Admiral Filippo Foffi, the commander in chief of the Italian fleet.

But Italy fears that ending the mission could prove a death sentence for future migrants.

“If no one is in surveillance of the high sea, then no one will see the disasters,” Foffi said. “(Smugglers) deliver these migrants in the cheapest way because they don’t care about their trip and about their safety.”

Saponaro is confident that no undetected sinkings are taking place in the area patrolled by Mare Nostrum. In the past, however, it was a common assumption that nine out of 10 boats starting the crossing across the Mediterranean never arrived at the other end.

“Of course there are still some deaths at sea, but ... now I would say that the (9-to-10) proportion is almost reversed,” Saporano said.

The navy argues that Mare Nostrum is not the “final solution” for the deadly migrant crossings, with Italy advocating for development aid in the migrants’ countries of origin and international help for unrest-beset Libya, which has become one of the biggest countries of transit.

“(We have) to see how we can concretely support the hopefully new Libyan government ... to have an effective control of the Libyan territory for the sake of the security of the whole area,” Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini told journalists last week.

Italy hopes to see the new Libyan authorities request assistance from the UN refugee agency, so that it can process asylum seekers directly in the North African country.

“This would be a game changer,” an Italian government source said. “It would allow many people not to start a desperate trip on the sea.”