‘Help’ sign on beach points rescuers to men stuck on Pacific atoll for nine days

Three men spelled out 'help' with palm fronds after becoming stranded on Pikelot Atoll, Yap State, Federated States of Micronesia. Photo / US Coast Guard

Three men stranded on an uninhabited Pacific island survived for more than a week and used palm fronds to spell out “help” on the beach – leading to their rescue by US Navy and Coast Guard aviators who spotted the sign from several thousand feet in the air.

They had embarked on March 31 in a 6-metre boat with an outboard motor from Pulawat Atoll, a small island with an estimated 1000 inhabitants in the Federated States of Micronesia about 3000km east of the Philippines.

The men were fishing when they hit a coral reef, putting a hole in the boat’s bottom and causing it to take on water, Lieutenant Keith Arnold said in a Coast Guard video.

A Coast Guard ship, the Oliver Henry, picked up the men and took them back to the atoll 160km away where they had set out nine days earlier, according to the statement.

They were “obviously very excited” to be reunited with their families, Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Christine Igisomar, a co-ordinator of the search and rescue mission, said in a Coast Guard video.

When their boat was damaged, “they knew they weren’t going to be able to make their return home and would need to beach their vessel”, said Arnold.

On April 6, a relative reported them missing to a Coast Guard facility in Guam, saying the men in their 40s had not returned from Pikelot Atoll. A search initially covering 200,000sq km began.

The crew of a US Navy P-8 Poseidon plane from Kadena Air Force Base in Japan spotted the three on Pikelot and dropped survival packages. The next day, a Coast Guard HC-130J Hercules plane from Air Station Barbers Point in Hawaii dropped a radio the men used to report they were thirsty but all right, Arnold said.

The crew of USCGC Oliver Henry, rescues three mariners who were stranded on Pikelot Atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia. Photo / US Coast Guard

“The help sign was pretty visible. We could see it from a couple thousand feet in the air,” Arnold said.

A similar rescue of three men from Pulawat Atoll happened in 2020. Those men spelled out “SOS” on the beach.

An Australian military helicopter crew landed and gave them food and water before a Micronesian patrol vessel could pick them up.