It's a crisis that can be told in numbers:  around 890,000 refugees and migrants  arrived to Europe by sea this year, while more than 3,500 have died and it's not over yet. Fleeing war, human rights abuses and persecution, refugees...

It’s early morning, cloudy with a light breeze and we are on standby as a rescue team for any approaching refugee boats that might get into trouble. And then … we get the call! A boat has been spotted in a position east of ours.

A short distance outside the village of Molyvos on the Greek Island of Lesbos there is a rubbish dump of life jackets, discarded now but forever witness to the hope and suffering of those who fled war, poverty and oppression this year.

The news passed quietly, but not without significance. I heard that a wounded and weakened loggerhead sea turtle washed ashore on the rocky Farmakonisi Island in the Aegean Sea, where it lay for several days slowly losing its strength.

As thousands of people gathered across Europe on Saturday to call for refugee rights, a human chain of hands was formed on a stony Lesbos beach next to a banner demanding ‘No more deaths’. Lesbos is on the frontline of Europe’s...