Two 'starved to death' in epic Mexico sea voyage

MEXICO CITY - Three Mexicans who survived for nine months as their small fishing boat drifted across the Pacific Ocean tossed two other men overboard after they died of starvation during the journey, officials said on Thursday.

The three were rescued last week by a trawler more than 8000km from Mexico's Pacific Coast fishing village of San Blas, where they left for what was supposed to be a routine shark fishing trip last November.

Stranded on the high seas for nine months, they stayed alive by eating raw birds and fish and drinking rain water, but the government said on Thursday that two other men perished during the ordeal and were thrown overboard.

"At the start of this fishing trip, there were five people on board the boat. Two of them would have died shortly afterward," Miguel Gutierrez, a senior official at Mexico's foreign ministry, told reporters.

"They refused to eat, and that's why they died," he said, and rejected suggestions that the survivors may have eaten the bodies of their dead companions.

The story has captivated Mexico but the survivors did not mention their dead companions when they were interviewed on Wednesday by radio and television stations from the boat that rescued them near the Marshall Islands.

Gutierrez said a survivor told a government official that one man died in January and the other in early February.

"It is natural that people who have spent nine months on the high seas, in the conditions they survived, would not have their complete story straight away," said Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez.

A local government official in San Blas said on Thursday that no one there knew two other men were on board the very basic 8m fibreglass boat.

The survivors' families had given them up for dead, and were astonished to learn from news reports that they survived.

"Now you see that miracles exist," said Marina Estrada, the aunt of one of the fishermen.

The three men were skinny and sunburned after their ordeal but are otherwise in good health.

The Taiwanese fishing trawler that found them is expected to return to port in the Marshall Islands next Monday. The survivors will then be given medical checks and flown home.

- REUTERS