Study traces and confirms castaway’s 13-month ordeal at sea
MAJURO: Fresh details have emerged of castaway Jose Salvador Alvarenga’s first encounter with other people after months at sea including how Marshall Islands residents communicated with him in broken Spanish learned from popular children’s television show Dora the Explorer.
Until now, little has been known about the Salvadorian’s arrival on far-flung Ebon Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where he landed two weeks ago after setting sail from Mexico on a fishing trip in December 2012.
But Ebon Mayor Ione de Brum revealed that Alvarenga “managed to swim his boat ashore” on a night late last month after a 12 500km journey.
Exhausted, he fell asleep on a deserted beach to be awoken the next morning by roosters crowing. Unknown to the 37year-old, he had washed up at the tip of Ebon, the southernmost atoll in the Marshalls.
A US study at the Univer- sity of Hawaii of the prevailing wind and current conditions has supported his tale of survival, with a model tracing a remarkably narrow path across the Pacific to pass within 193km of Ebon.
The findings were drawn from a model originally developed to investigate variations in ocean surface circulation.
“Alvarenga’s claim that he had been adrift for 13 months and that he came from Mexico falls well within the model’s limits and is consistent with the prevailing pattern of wind and ocean currents during his ordeal,” the study found.
Starting 200 nautical miles south-west of the Mexican fishing village, Chiapas, where he began his odyssey, the model’s 16 tracers took a “remarkably narrow path” across the Pacific, passing by or nearing Ebon Atoll within 193km by the end of last month, the study found.
The
model’s parameters were drawn from actual drift patterns of debris across the Pacific from Japan to Hawaii after that country’s devastating 2011 tsunami.
“The experience with capsized fishing boats from the tsunami that reached the shores of Hawaii one-and-ahalf to two-and-a-half years later guided us in using realistic model parameters to simulate the fisherman’s boat drift from Mexico,” said Jan Hafner, one of the study’s authors from the university’s International Pacific Research Centre.
Diplomats said his story appeared to stack up, with his account matching reports of his disappearance, although his survival tale has been met with scepticism in some quarters.
Alvarenga said he survived on a diet of raw fish, turtles, bird blood, his own urine, rainwater and dreams of eating his favourite food – tortillas. The turtle shell was used as a cup to drink from. – Sapa-AFP