 Statistics of people in sea survival situations show that only 10 percent remain calm enough to make good decisions. With 20 percent on an emotional roller coaster ride; initially stunned, often in shock, they can turn hyperactive, and sometimes unintentionally sabotage the chances of survival for all. Photo:Fishermen’s Voice
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San Blas, on the Western coast of Mexico, is home to thousands of sustenance-fishermen, most of them barely eking-out a living from the sea. They fish battered old 25-foot fiberglass boats with outboards. Their equipment is a mix-match of old and new, hand-me-downs and improvised crap, and you can count the number of boats with radios or life-saving gear on one hand. They stay mostly inshore, but will chase the fish where ever. At the end of the day, they run their boats up onto the beach and sell what they can. What’s left goes home for dinner or is bartered for necessities.
Last November, five of these San Blas fishermen set out in a boat looking for shark. The fishing wasn’t good, so they kept moving farther out and down the coast. Late in the day, they finally decided to call it quits, swung about and pointed toward home. Their boat was slapping along the chop, fighting a headwind, when their old outboard suddenly sputtered to a stop. Where a second ago there had been the loud, high-pitched whine of the two-stroke, now there was only the slap of water against the hull and the sound of the wind. A quick inspection revealed that they were out of gas, with no extra fuel.
They sat there for a while, bobbing up and down, looking for anyone, maybe another fisherman out this far, who could tow them in or siphon off enough gas to get them to shore, but their luck continued to be bad and was about to get much worse. There was nothing to do but wait, so the five men sat there patiently in the boat, with the wind and the currents both conspiring against them, and they watched as the sun began to set and Mexico slowly disappeared beyond the horizon. Later that night, their worried families passed the word of their disappearance and in the morning all the fishermen kept an eye out, but there was no sign of the lost boat.
Someone called the officials and the Mexican Navy sent a local patrol boat, but they saw nothing. The families tried to hold out hope, but 140,000 water-related deaths occur worldwide each year and, sadly, the men became part of the statistics.
The families anthe community mourned the loss. “May the Mother of God protect them on their journey to a better place,” a grandfather prayed.
And so it was a journey that those fishermen took, but, for three of the five, it was not to the hereafter.
On August 16, nine months after it had set out, the boat, with three of the five fishermen aboard, was found by a Taiwanese tuna fishing trawler, 5,000 miles from San Blas, in the waters near the Marshall Islands. The three were badly sun burnt, dehydrated and hungry, but alive.
So far, the information on how they survived is sketchy.
“We ate raw fish, ducks and sea gulls,” Jesus Vidana, one of the three survivors, said during a phone interview with a Mexican radio station, after they were picked up. “We tried to catch any bird that landed on our boat. If we caught it, we killed it and ate it raw. We collected rainwater to drink and we read the bible.”
“If this is on the level, those men have set the record for survival at sea,” John McMillan, of McMillan Offshore Survival Training, said. McMillan has been teaching emergency preparedness training courses for over 21 years, and heads the Maine based training program. “It’s interesting that they had a bible with them. There’s a striking correlation between the ability to survive and religious faith. Being able to keep the faith that you’ll survive is one of the key ingredients to making it through that sort of situation…These men who survived were lucky in the fact that the water was warmer than what we find in the North Atlantic, and it rained enough for them to collect water,” McMillan said.
“They were also able to hold on long enough for sea-life to start growing on the boat’s hull, like barnacles and plankton. When you get that, the next thing you know you’ve got larger fish, and once that’s happening, the birds will start coming,” he added.
McMillan said that their cultural background was also in their favor. “I’m going to guess, from what you’ve told me, that these fishermen are probably poor, and even on land they’re working hard just to survive. They’re probably also used to the sun. This would give them an advantage. They’d have been in a mental state that would make this type of survival not as big of a reach as it might be for other people.
For instance, just the act of catching and eating a raw fish or sea bird is something most people can’t do. I’d guess that these men didn’t have to stretch far to be able to find a way to keep the anxiety levels down and find hope.”
The information about what happened to the two men who didn’t survive is still vague. One report says that the men starved to death. Another claims that the two jumped overboard during the first week of the ordeal. McMillan says that the latter would not be uncommon. “When you talk about long-term survival, you’re talking about anything over 72 hours. If you can make it that far, you’ve crossed a major hurdle,” he said Statistics of people in sea survival situations show that only 10 percent remain calm enough to make good decisions. 70 percent will be gripped by fear that may turn to panic, with these people experiencing a loss of objectivity, reason and judgment. The remaining 20 percent in a situation like this are on an emotional roller coaster ride; initially stunned, often in shock, they can turn hyperactive, and sometimes unintentionally sabotage the chances of survival for all. In an effort to clean up the boat, for example, they might throw all the supplies and equipment overboard.
Among other records for long term survival at sea, there is the 1942 story of Poon Lim, who survived four months alone in the South Atlantic after a German sub torpedoed the British merchant ship he was working on. And back in 1789, British Vice Adm. William Bligh of The Bounty was cast adrift with 18 crew after a majority of his men mutinied. Bligh’s group survived for six-weeks, eventually coming ashore on the island of Timor.
The three Mexican fishermen’s epic adventure won’t be entered into the record books until many questions are answered. On August 24, the Associated Press in Mexico City reported that the Mexican government is launching an inquiry into the three fishermen’s story. The Mexican media has cast doubt on the men’s account, and the government said it would investigate the two deaths and other aspects of the survivors’ tale.
