Castaway Jose Salvador Albarengo back on land after over a year adrift at sea

The Mexican fisherman and his young companion got lost at sea on December 24th 2012.

13:53 03 February 2014

37-year-old Jose Salvador Albarengo, who got lost at sea on December 24th 2014 together with his young companion, has emerged in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. 

 

He was found among remote Ebon Atol coral reef. According to US ambassador Thomas Armbruster, who acted as Albarengo’s interpreter, the castaway was a shrimp and shark fisherman. 

 

It was reported that he was on a shark-fishing expedition for the fishing company Camoronera Dela Costa in Tapachula, Mexico when strong winds forced his 24-foot fiberglass boat off course. 

 

The fisherman, who ‘looked better than anyone expected’, said that his companion, a teenager named Xiquel, died a few weeks after they got lost because he was unable to eat raw bird meat. Meanwhile, he told reporters that he survived by eating turtles, birds, and fish and by drinking turtle blood and rainwater. 

 

Ola Fjeldstad, a Norwegian anthropology student on Ebon Atoll, was one of the first people to meet the castaway when she and other researchers found his boat. He said: “And when we got there we first found his boat, which was... grown over with shells and other sea animals. It had a live baby bird, a dead turtle, some turtle shells, and fish leftovers inside.”

 

“He was in really bad shape in terms of strength and in terms of mental health.”