Ettore Raffi was born in Lampedusa on the 12th of November 1938 to a family of fishermen. He had two male siblings. He started working at sea when he was 15 years old and some of his destinations included Mississippi and Panama while he was a marine engineer. He left in 1982 when he became a janitor at a school in Lampedusa. He got married and had three children: two girls and a boy. He had always lived in Lampedusa.

Giacomo Matina was born in Lampedusa on the 2nd December 1932. His father was a fisherman and his mother a housewife.
He started to help other fisherman at the age of eight and at twelve years of age he left school to start working as fisherman. He plied his trade between Lampedusa and Malta till 1958. In 1958 he got married to a Maltese woman, Carmela, and they had two daughters (Nicolette and Antoinette) and one son (Joseph). From 1959 till 1973 he travelled between Malta and Libya and worked as a steel fixer. In 1973 the family decided to move to Australia, where Giacomo worked as a labourer till 1997. He had been retired when the interview was recorded.

Giovanni Fragapane was born in Lampedusa on the 21st of September 1939, the son of a fisherman and a housewife. He had studied History of Art in Rome and had lived in different places, including Palermo and Milan. He was a professor of History of Art in Aprilia and in Lampedusa and between 1983 to 1993 he was also the mayor of Lampedusa. He had published a book about the island titled 'Lampedusa' and is considered the island's historian.

Salvatore Davì was born in Lampedusa on the 31st of March 1946 to a family of fishermen. He had two brothers and one sister. He worked as a fisherman in Lampedusa and afterwards in Malta. He got married to a Maltese woman and in 1970 he decided to relocate to Malta. He found employment in Malta with a small private company. He had three sons and one daughter.