5 rescued after marlin sinks boat
MANILA: It reads like a modern day take on The Old Man and the Sea — five Filipino fishermen cast adrift for days on a raft after a huge marlin sinks their boat.
The men were fishing in the South China Sea last week when a 1.8m marlin punctured their boat’s wooden hull with its giant bill, vessel master Jimmy Batiller, 42, said yesterday.
Their 12m boat quickly dipped beneath the waves in the evening of Oct 3, leaving the crew with little water or food until their rescue by the US Navy on Monday.
“It (the fish) hit the bottom of our boat, leaving two big holes. We suspect it was chasing a smaller fish. It swam around the sink- ing boat for a while, apparently disorientated,” Batiller said.
The fishermen salvaged what they could, removing the outriggers, planks and barrels to create a makeshift raft.
“Our water ran out after two days. We waved at passing commercial vessels but no one came to rescue us. But we did not lose hope,” the father of one said, adding that the crew also ate raw rice and drank seawater.
“When we were rescued, that was when our tears fell,” said Batiller, who has since been reunited with his family in Subic, a port 80km northwest of here.
The US Navy said the men were lucky to survive, especially when they said they had drunk seawater.
“On average, death results two to three days after a diet of drinking undiluted sea water or urine in survival-at-sea events as it takes more water than is consumed for the body to process the waste and salt,” Leon Hadley, the civilian chief mate from the ship which conducted the rescue, the USNS Wally Schirra, said.
“Luckily, we were going at a slow speed to have spotted the fishermen,” the Wally Schirra’s master Keith Sauls added.
Batiller said he and his crew planned to go back to sea after a few days’ rest, provided they can find a new boat.
“This is our job,” he said.