
Lost at sea: a man who vanished for 14 months - angadsg
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/07/fisherman-lost-at-sea-436-days-book-extract?CMP=fb_gu
======
bootload
_" They ate fish after fish. Alvarenga stuffed raw meat and dried meat into
his mouth, hardly noticing or caring about the difference."_

Fine detail born out of other survivors of long sea voyages, when eating fish
don't skip they _" eyes"_.

 _" Another unlikely luxury are fish eyes, which are a useful source of liquid
and of another vital nutrient. Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, a British couple
who survived 117 days on a rubber life raft in the Pacific in 1973, did not
initially understand why they sought them, Tipton said: "They found they
started to crave fish eyes, which is not something one would normally do. It
wasn't until after the voyage they realised these are quite rich in vitamin C,
which is something you get depleted in when you're adrift, and can of course
cause scurvy."_ [0]

I remember reading about the how the Baileys who survived 117 days in the
pacific in '73\. There is a lot more details in Tiptons, _" Essentials of Sea
Survival"_. [1] Another detail, was solid boat. Had Alvarenga been in a life
raft, he would have been a lot more battered and bruised. The Baileys suffered
from sharks regularly bumping the raft throughout their ordeal.

[0] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/04/castaway-
jose-s...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/04/castaway-jose-
salvador-alvarenga-survival-expert)

[1] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Essentials-Sea-Survival-Frank-
Golden...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Essentials-Sea-Survival-Frank-
Golden/dp/0736002154)

~~~
jychang
Interesting how cultural perspectives differ on this.

As a Chinese American, I wouldn't think twice about eating the eyes of a fish.
They're tasty!

~~~
madaxe_again
Yup, a bit like caviar in texture and taste, I find, but sweeter.

Sheep eyes, on the other hand, are disturbing as they balefully glare at you
from your bowl of soup.

~~~
reitanqild
People make sheeps heads soup?

(They're supposed to be salted and dried then cooked for Sunday dinner
(skjelte) or even better smoked over open fire, then cooked (smalahove) and
eaten at party with friends.)

------
oska
> _Although he didn’t know it, Alvarenga had washed ashore on Tile Islet, a
> small island that is part of the Ebon Atoll, on the southern tip of the
> 1,156 islands that make up the Republic of the Marshall Islands, one of the
> most remote spots on Earth._

As it took me a little while to find Tile Islet, here's the link on google
maps for others' convenience:

[https://www.google.com.au/maps/@4.6210188,168.7678056,15z](https://www.google.com.au/maps/@4.6210188,168.7678056,15z)

~~~
madaxe_again
He got _very_ lucky - as not only was bumping into the Marshalls remarkable,
but he didn't end up on Eniwetok/Enewetak or one of the other nuked atolls,
where only radiation sickness would have greeted him.

~~~
Retric
It's been long enough that the most radioactive stuff is gone, the US military
also did extensive cleanup 30 years ago.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enewetak_Atoll#/media/File:Run...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enewetak_Atoll#/media/File:Runit_Dome_001.jpg)

"The final cost of the cleanup project was $239 million."

------
pcunite
"Occasionally, the turtles are very tame. I was lying down and thinking about
things and then a turtle would hit my boat and attach itself to it and start
chewing at my boat," Alvarenga recounted, according to Reuters. "And since
turtles are tame I would pick them up and put them in my boat, this is how I
quenched my thirst, from their blood, and it did me good as it was a sort of
water and I normally ate the turtle's meat."

Link:

[http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/marshall-islands-
castaway/p...](http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/marshall-islands-
castaway/pacific-castaway-passed-lie-detector-test-lawyer-says-n72536)

~~~
madeofpalk
Life of Pi, chapter 70 [http://www.litcharts.com/lit/life-of-
pi/chapter-70](http://www.litcharts.com/lit/life-of-pi/chapter-70)

------
GigabyteCoin
I find it incredible that their drifting sent them in the same general
direction that Thor Heyerdahl [0] suspected (and verified in the Kon-Tiki
expedition) that one would go without any extra power of their own.

The fact that a man who didn't even plan for the trip (or have any provisions)
made it out alive even though he was virtually alone for the entire trip (his
partner died after 2 months) leads me to believe that Thor was mostly right,
and that South Americans did indeed travel to Polynesia and beyond probably
more often than we originally thought.

What an amazing story.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl)

~~~
mkl
You have it backwards. Polynesians travelled to South America and back,
acquiring sweet potatoes there, possibly some human DNA, and leaving chickens
(there is good evidence for each of these, but it's not undeniable). There is
a huge amount of evidence of Polynesians travelling long distances by sea,
and, as far as I can see, essentially no evidence for South Americans doing
this. The fact that it was theoretically possible does not mean it happened.

~~~
drumdance
Last year at the local planetarium I saw a great presentation about how the
Polynesians navigated using the stars. It was a tradition that was almost
lost, but they found someone in the 70s whose grandfather had taught him how,
and now they have a school in Hawaii that teaches it.

[http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/index/founder_and_teachers/nainoa_...](http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/index/founder_and_teachers/nainoa_thompson.html)

Interestingly, part of their motivation in reviving it was that they were
offended by Heyerdahl's hypothesis, which in their view basically said
"Polynesians were dumb enough to get on a raft and just let it drift." More
recently DNA analysis has shown that Polynesians came from Asia, not South
America.

~~~
bebop
FYI his name was Mau Piailug:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Piailug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Piailug)

------
grecy
If you enjoy tales of survival against the odds, I highly recommend Deep
Survival by Laurence Gonzales [1]

It recounts multiple amazing tales of survival against the odds, then goes
into the psychology of what's needed to survive such a situation. Finally, it
lists the top 10 traits exhibited by survivors of these kinds of situations.

[1]
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393326152/?tag=roadchoseme-20](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393326152/?tag=roadchoseme-20)

~~~
gaius
Not just psychology but neurochemistry as well, some really deep nature-vs-
nurture stuff in there. Great book, as a technical diver and divemaster I got
a lot from it.

------
Magi604
I am curious as to how he caught these turtles and birds in the open sea while
in his no doubt famished shape.

"shoved his arms into the water up to his shoulders . . . When a fish swam
between his hands, he smashed them shut"

Seriously, this needs some mythbusters-style testing.

~~~
qume
Birds and turtles are curious about drifting things, like boats. And both are
easy to catch (well, relatively).

I haven't caught fish with my hands but at sea been in situations where it
didn't seem impossible. And the fishermen I know in the area (I live there on
a boat) are magicians.

So sure, everything needs testing but I have a bit of a frame of reference
around this one and it raises no red flags for me at all. Plus it's inline
with the other lost-at-sea books I've read.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I once put my hand around an urban squirrel's tail. Could have held it if I'd
squeezed a bit. It was sitting on a wall munching some garbage, and I just
walked straight up to it. Have you ever seen a squirrel do a double-take?

I guess my point is that even slippery little animals aren't as uncatchable as
one would expect, if you can take them by surprise.

~~~
JackFr
That seems like step one of a plan to get rabies.

~~~
ghshephard
According to the CDC, squirrels are almost never a source of rabies.
[http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/pets/](http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/pets/) \- that is,
unless they are acting in an unusual manner, such as letting people walk up to
them and grab them....

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It was a campus squirrel. They're generally used to people walking by within a
few feet. This was just a little slow to shift gears, apparently.

------
mmmBacon
I'm curious about the long-term health affects from such an experience. The
parasites sound particularly nasty. [edit] It would be nice to know if he is
expected to recover his physical health or if he is left with chronic
conditions.

 _raw birds had infected his liver with parasites. Alvarenga believed the
parasites might rise up to his head and attack his brain_

------
ps4fanboy
"23kg (50lb) of sardines for bait, 700 hooks, miles of line"

"Without bait or fish hooks, Alvarenga invented a daring strategy to catch
fish. "

I am confused these statements are contradictory, did I miss something.

~~~
werdnapk
As mentioned in the article, he tossed almost everything overboard to make the
boat more stable in the waves.

~~~
phy6
Hooks and line have got to be the worst choices to throw overboard. I can't
imagine it made much of a weight difference on a boat as long as two trucks.
But then again he also smashed the engine when he got mad, so maybe it was
just one in a series of poor choices.

~~~
jonnathanson
The article doesn't make clear what sort of hooks and line these were. It's
likely to have been a big, heavy, motorized rig from which the line and hooks
couldn't be neatly separated, especially while frantically aligning the boat
and bailing water in a freak storm.

We should also bear in mind that, at that moment, Alvarenga wasn't
anticipating a year at sea. In fact, he was acting to _prevent_ that fate. He
believed that his first priority was the right the ship at any cost, because
the alternative was capsizing or going adrift. From there, he'd planned to
make it back to shore or be rescued in relatively short order.

It's too easy to critique his choices retrospectively. Some of them look bad
on paper, out of context. But I've never been placed into that sort of
context.

As a general rule, your first priority in any emergency at sea is to stay
afloat. This directive overrules all others until you believe your vessel is
stable and secure.

------
mojuba
One of the absolutely necessary things you should have on board is solar
panels, to keep your radio alive.

Also, the movie _All Is Lost_ comes to mind.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Or some other kind of backup radio or emergency signaling device; solar panels
sound awfully expensive / fragile, instead you could have a self-contained
wind-up system, bolted onto the ship somewhere secure.

~~~
jzwinck
Current practice on first-world vessels sometimes includes solar panels, but
even better is an EPIRB [1]. Too expensive for third-world fishermen who
anyway did not intend an ocean crossing. You don't need long-term power for
it, because you only activate it once, it is more power efficient than talking
on a radio, and it doesn't need to run for very long, because there is a high
chance you will be rescued straight away.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_radiobeacon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_radiobeacon)

------
normac
This kind of thing makes me wonder if there are dozens or hundreds of other
cases where people were lost at sea and survived for many months and thousands
of miles, but never made it to land so we'll never know.

------
HillaryBriss
If you liked that, you may also like "The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor" by
Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Available from fine retailers of books. And Amazon.com.

------
akshatpradhan
How would you find others still out there living in similar precarious
situations?

~~~
mojuba
Some sort of automatic scanners on all cargo and cruise ships.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
A most interesting idea.

I've read several of these "survival at sea" stories and one thing they all
have in common is the fact that they end up passing many container ships
before they are rescued. Certainly some kind of automated scanning would save
lives.

~~~
canjobear
The problem might not be technological. It's possible that the container ships
see these people and choose not to save them. The owners and crew of the ship
have a monetary incentive not to save people: according to [1] they have to
pay a penalty for arriving at a port with people not listed on the crew
manifest.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/world/stowaway-crime-
scoff...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/world/stowaway-crime-scofflaw-
ship.html)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
There's also the question of whether or not people need rescuing. Simply
because you see somebody adrift, even if they're waving their arms, doesn't
mean it's necessarily a true emergency. And now we would make container ships
stop and investigate? That doesn't work.

Still, even if the data was simply collected and logged, perhaps others could
sift through it for clues about where rescues might need to take place. With
the cost of cameras and bandwidth continuing to go down, it wouldn't be a
crazy expensive thing to install.

------
callesgg
Interesting read.

An idea:

Using planet.com's satelite images to find boats at drift seams like a cool
use of technology.

~~~
beeboop
If you recall when that airliner went missing tons of people starting scanning
satellite images for debris. The resolution is simply not high enough to
detect tiny little things like debri or life rafts.

~~~
callesgg
The difference is that planet.com will give a picture per day; every day.

1x1m is what they claim and if you get one image a day i recon one could use
some statistical analysis and get better results.

I do recognize that it wont be easy despite that. Image all the shit that is
floating around that is not a shipwreck.

~~~
got2surf
The picture per day part is really cool - instead of having to look for a life
raft/debris, we can look for patterns of abnormality across time. Given how
large the ocean is, we have a good sense of the 'normal' distribution of
images every day, so maybe we can find patterns like consistently "abnormal"
images along a wind/current vector over 7 days. Individual debris may not be
visible, but fields of debris may have some characteristics we can recognize.

