Three Mexican fishermen who drifted 8,000km across the Pacific Ocean in a nine-month odyssey -- and who were given up for dead by their families -- are expected back on dry land on Tuesday, after the owner of the Taiwanese fishing boat that rescued the trio ordered the vessel to return to port early so the men could go home, a company manager yesterday.
The three men had been expected to remain on the fishing boat for up to two weeks longer after their rescue near the Marshall Islands on Aug. 9, Koo's Fishing Co manager Eugene Muller said.
But company owner Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏), a former senior adviser to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), has ordered the boat to return to the Marshall Islands capital Majuro straightaway following the three men's amazing ordeal.
PHOTO: AP
"He phoned me and said these guys have been lost at sea for so long, we should get them back home as soon as possible," Muller said.
"The fishing boat will lose money by stopping its fishing trip but Mr Koo wants to get the fishermen home," he added.
Salvador Ordonez Vasques, Jesus Eduardo Vidana Lopez and Lucio Randon Bacerra from the Pacific port of San Blas in central Mexico were "skinny and hungry" but otherwise healthy when picked up from their disabled outboard fishing boat, Muller said earlier.
Muller said the three men have gained weight since being picked up by the tuna fishing boat.
An official from the Mexican embassy in New Zealand will be flying to Majuro over the weekend to help the fishermen return home, he added.
The news of the trio's survival stunned friends and relatives.
"It's truly a miracle. Everyone is very happy," said Jose Guadalupe Guerra, an official in San Blas.
"Everyone found out from the television. A cousin of one of them fainted from the shock. His grandfather also got very emotional -- they'd written them off as dead," he said.
Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez told reporters on Wednesday that he was surprised by reports of the fishermen's Aug. 9 rescue near the Marshall Islands, 8,800km from Mexico's Pacific coast.
"The truth is that it really was a surprise, and it was a surprise for everybody, because there hadn't been any report that they were missing," Derbez said.
Derbez said Mexican authorities would be on hand to issue them passports so that they can return to Mexico, once they arrive in the Marshall Islands.
The trio survived by eating raw fish and seagulls, drinking rainwater and keeping desperation at bay by reading the Bible.
"We thought about death a lot but we never lost hope," Salvador Ordonez told Mexican television in a telephone interview from the tuna fishing boat that rescued the three men last week.
Ordonez, Vidana and Rendon said they set off on Oct. 28 from the sleepy fishing and tourist town of San Blas in the Pacific coastal state of Nayarit. The three men, all in their 20s, were intending to catch some shark in deep water and had taken only a few days of food and water on board their 9m boat with two outboard motors.
Everything was going normally until they had problems with their fishing equipment. Then they ran out of fuel.
"The wind started taking us," Ordonez said, remembering the Marias Islands penal colony (itself some 80km from the mainland) slowly disappearing on the horizon.
"Day after day we saw the islands getting further away and that was a terrible moment. To see them there and not have the fuel to get to them," he said.
Their supplies soon ran out and they were forced to rely on their ability to catch fish and sea birds.
"Sometimes our stomachs would hurt," Vidana said, referring to regular three-day stints without food, and one occasion when they caught nothing for two weeks.
They had more luck with the rain and managed to collect water to drink on most days. As well as facing up to the threat of slowly dying of thirst or starvation, the men had to contend with the terror of being swallowed up by the deep.
"Two times we thought we were going to sink. Two times we thought we were going to die," Vidana said, remembering the waves crashing into their boat as they frantically bailed out water.
But the men said they kept desperation from taking hold by reading the Bible Ordonez had brought.
"We read the Bible all the time, and all the time we prayed, all of us together," he said.
And as they prayed the days, weeks and months passed, with the little fishing boat drifting 8,850km westward.
The men said that they had used a compass to show which direction they were going, and they had guessed that they must have reached the center of the ocean when they went for months without seeing another vessel.
They knew they had reached the other side when ships started appearing on the horizon again.
"We would be happy when we saw a ship and we would wave our arms [at them] but when we saw they hadn't seen us and went on their way we would get sad," Vidana recalled. "Sometimes we would cry, but then we would forget it and start chatting again."
Salvation eventually came when they were asleep. The Taiwanese ship spotted their vessel on its radar and went to investigate. The men said they didn't realize what was happening until they heard the motor bearing down, and even then they didn't quite believe it.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the southern coast of Mindanao in the Philippines at 7:38am today, prompting the US Tsunami Warning System to issue an alert for neighboring countries, including Taiwan. The system issued a purple alert indicating a "tsunami threat." The potential threat zone includes Taiwan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Yap and Palau. Philippine authorities were assessing the damage from the quake, with the office of civil defense seeking to verifying initial reports that 15 people had been killed and 129 injured in the region, mostly from falling debris. Arlene Hollero, disaster chief of Maasim town in the Philippines' Sarangani Province,
‘GRAY ZONE’ PRESSURE: Beijing’s activities are intended to create the deceitful impression that China has jurisdiction over the area around Taiwan, the CGA said Taiwan’s rights over its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone must not be violated by any country, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that it will not accept any unprovoked actions. The council issued the remarks in response to the China Coast Guard conducting maritime enforcement drills near eastern Taiwan and claiming to fully exercise China’s maritime administrative law enforcement authority. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) has been closely monitoring the situation and is taking concrete steps to defend the nation’s sovereignty and secure its waters, the council said. China has no sovereign rights over the waters off eastern
RESILIENCE: Taiwan plays a key role in semiconductors, energy, information infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, AIT Director Raymond Greene said Taiwan’s continued investment in deterrence and resilience remains vital, especially in uncrewed systems and other emerging technologies, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene said yesterday. Greene made the remarks at the annual National Strategic Summit on Supply Chain Resilience held by the Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET), a government-backed think tank. As Taiwan last year became the US’ fourth-largest trading partner and supply chain security is becoming more important, cooperation in emerging technologies continues to deepen between the two countries, he said. The US is committed to accelerating innovation, building key infrastructure, strengthening cooperation
RIGHT DIRECTION: Taiwan’s efforts to prevent forced labor include a proposal to ‘fully prohibit’ employers from withholding workers’ documents, an official said Taiwan is to establish a mechanism to restrict imports of goods linked to forced labor, the Executive Yuan said yesterday, after the US proposed imposing additional tariffs on Taiwanese goods over labor concerns. “The Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Economic Affairs are to establish an interministerial review procedure,” Executive Yuan spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “The government is to use the Foreign Trade Act [貿易法] as the legal basis to restrict imports of goods produced with forced labor” and bring its supply chain governance more in line with international standards on human rights, resilience
RSS