Four survive 32 days adrift in Pacific after living off coconuts and rainwater

Twelve people originally set off from Buka for the Carteret Islands on December 22. Four survivors were found on January 23, 2000km away from where they started. Photo / 123RF

Four people have survived 32 days stranded in the Pacific by eating coconuts and drinking rainwater in an extraordinary ordeal that claimed the lives of eight others including a baby, according to local reports.

The group, from Papua New Guinea's Bougainville province, set off from Bougainville on December 22, with the intention of spending Christmas in the Carteret Islands, about 100 kilometres away.

However, their small boat capsized and several members of the group drowned, the only survivor with "the strength and energy to talk" told the Solomon Star News.

The rest managed to right the vessel and clamber back on board but more died as they lay adrift far from land and pulled by powerful ocean currents.

"We could do nothing with their dead bodies, we just have to let go of them at sea," survivor Dominic Stally told the local newspaper.

"A couple have died and left behind their baby and I am the one who held onto the baby and later the baby died as well," said the traumatised survivor.

"I am really sorry but there is nothing more I could do to help save the family," he said.

Stally said they only survived by eating and drinking floating coconuts and collecting rain water for drinking using a bowl that was also used for getting water out of the boat.

The stricken group were given false hope when several fishing boats passed nearby but failed to notice them as they had no flares to raise the alarm.

A fishing vessel finally spotted them on January 23 off New Caledonia. They had drifted some 2000 kilometres after more than a month at the mercy of the waves.

The Star News said the survivors comprised two men, one in his 20s, a woman and a girl aged about 12.

After a week on the fishing boat, they were dropped off in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, last Saturday. They were handed over to Papua New Guinea's High Commissioner John Balavu after receiving treatment for dehydration.

Tales of survival

The Pacific has been the scene of a string of remarkable tales of survival.

In January 2014 Salvadoran fisherman Jose Alvarenga washed up in the Marshall Islands, more than 13 months after he set off from Mexico's west coast with a companion, who died.

More than a year at sea, he covered an area of 8000km in a fibreglass boat by catching fish, birds and turtles with his bare hands and drinking rainwater, the turtles' blood, and his own urine.

His incredible story was initially greeted with scepticism, but he passed a lie detector test and an examination of ocean currents and boating records backed his claim. In 2015 he denied claims in a lawsuit filed by Alvarenga's family that he committed cannibalism by eating his crewmate to stay alive.

An Indonesian teenager survived seven weeks at sea in 2018 after his tiny fishing trap lost its moorings and ended up some 2500 kilometres away off Guam.

In 2001, Lapahele Sopi and Telea Paa from Samoa in the South Pacific survived for four months adrift at sea in a small metal boat. The pair were rescued in Papua New Guinea - 4000km from their homes.