Two Papua New Guinea Islanders Survive More Than Four Months Adrift, One Companion Dies

With their outboard motor gone, two men from Papua New Guinea spent more than four months drifting across the western Pacific before a tuna seiner found them and brought them to Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia. A third man who had been with them died at sea.

The two survivors, both carpenters, had left Lihir Island in New Ireland Province on July 15 to travel to nearby Tanga Island, about 30 miles away, when their outboard ran out of fuel. The 220-foot tuna seiner Yap Seagull, registered in Yap, discovered Michael Bolong, 54, and his nephew Ambros Wavut, 28, on Nov. 23. The fishing vessel spotted them weak but visibly relieved about 116 miles south of Kapingamarangi Island.

Although the pair were roughly 300 miles as the crow flies from their starting point, officials estimate that storms and ocean currents carried the small open boat an average of about 1,000 miles during the four months and eight days they were adrift. A third man, 48-year-old Francis Dimansol, died during the ordeal and was lost at sea.

“After weeks, a month, we were forgotten,” Bolong told his rescuers, explaining that he assumed any search for them had long since ended. In many cases, organized searches are discontinued after only days or weeks, and Bolong believed they had already been declared lost.

Edgar Santos, administrator of Pohnpei State Hospital, said the men survived by drinking rainwater and eating raw fish after their limited food supplies ran out. “They brought some dried food on the boat with them, but that didn’t last very long,” Santos said after hospital staff treated the men. Although trained as carpenters, the survivors had fishing gear on board—a common precaution for Pacific islanders traveling between islands in small boats. “People rarely travel inter-island on small boats without a hook and line,” Santos added, noting that the gear can be crucial if bad weather or navigational errors leave people stranded at sea.

When they arrived in Pohnpei on Nov. 29, Santos described Bolong and Wavut as “slightly emaciated” but otherwise in generally good physical condition aside from severe sunburn. After receiving medical care, the fishermen were taken in by the Salvation Army rescue mission until arrangements could be made to repatriate them to Papua New Guinea.

Dr. Claude Piantadosi, a professor of medicine at Duke University and author of The Biology of Human Survival, explained why a diet of fish and collected rainwater can sustain people adrift for long periods. “We need water on a regular basis of about 1.5 liters per day, on average,” he said. “No drinking water at sea in the tropics means, as a rule of thumb, you will die in roughly 100 hours—a little longer if it is cool and shaded, and shorter if it is hot and sunny.”

On the subject of food, Piantadosi noted that complete starvation typically takes six to eight weeks for an adult male. While seawater is unsafe to drink, collecting and storing rainwater is lifesaving. He added that people can survive by consuming the blood of seabirds and turtles—and that fish provide sufficient protein and essential nutrients to keep someone alive for extended periods.

The Federated States of Micronesia government commended the crew of the Yap Seagull for rendering assistance. In an official statement, the government reminded mariners that federation admiralty and maritime law obligates a ship’s master to aid anyone found at sea in distress if assistance can be provided without endangering the vessel, crew, or passengers. The statement noted that while some vessels have failed to assist people in distress, the Yap Seagull “performed admirably and rendered assistance without question.”

The survivors’ overturned open boat was abandoned at sea, but the ship’s crew recovered the outboard motor and the men’s personal belongings and brought them aboard. After their release from the hospital, Bolong and Wavut stayed at the Salvation Army mission in Pohnpei until they were repatriated to Papua New Guinea.

Santos noted that small-boat crews from neighboring islands periodically turn up in Pohnpei exhausted, sunburned and undernourished, and not all are recovered. He pointed to recent cases involving travelers from the Marshall Islands and Kiribati. “Our people drift other places, too,” he said. “Some are never found. It’s a way of life on the sea. People in the U.S. die in car accidents. We mostly die [by accident] from things like this.”

Though four months adrift is an extraordinary ordeal, it is not the longest recorded. Guinness World Records documents a survival of 484 days by Japanese Captain Oguri Jukichi, whose ship was disabled off Japan in October 1813; Oguri and one crewman were rescued off California in March 1815 after living on beans and distilled seawater, while other crewmembers died of scurvy.

More recently, on Jan. 30 a Salvadoran fisherman, José Salvador Alvarenga, arrived at Ebon in the Marshall Islands saying he had been adrift for 14 months. Alvarenga reported that he survived by catching fish, birds and turtles, and by drinking turtle blood and rainwater; his companion reportedly died after about four months.

February 2015 issue