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A 15-year-old boy survived on top of an overturned skiff in Alaska’s frigid Bering Sea for roughly two days, losing his older brother and then his cousin to the ocean after the boat capsized while they were out fishing.
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The teen, identified by a relative as Derek Parker Aghnaanga, was finally hoisted to safety Monday by a fishing boat near St. Lawrence Island — a remote Alaskan island closer to Russia than it is to the United States. The bodies of his cousin and brother were also recovered.
The cousin had held onto the overturned boat for a while too, but did not survive until the rescue, the teen told one of the rescuers.
The captain of the fishing boat that came to his aid said Aghnaanga clung to the skiff through darkness and water temperatures around 50 degrees (10 degrees Celsius).
“That’s one tough kid,” Adam White, captain of The Northwest Explorer, told KTUU-TV in Anchorage.
“Through the teeth chattering, he had mentioned that his brother was still under the skiff,” White said. “And then he said that, in the previous night, before our rescue, that his cousin had slipped away.”
U.S. Coast Guard planes and helicopters began searching for the skiff Monday morning after family members reported the three missing the night before.
The group left the village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island on Friday and planned to return early Sunday, the Coast Guard said.
Halibut fishing is a part of the culture and important to survival in the village where there are about 800 residents and jobs are hard to come by, said Collen Walker, an aunt of the two brothers. Residents often share their catch with family and neighbors, she said.
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“That’s how we do it in our community. We take care of one another,” she said Friday. “We still live a traditional way of life even if the world is changing.”
Aghnaanga, the teen rescued, often went fishing with his 35-year-old brother, Sidney Kulowiyi, and looked to him as a father figure ever since their own father died when they were younger, Walker said.
She described Kulowiyi, a commercial fishing captain, as a humble and loving “provider for people in the village.” She didn’t want to release the name of their cousin who died, saying he also came from Savoonga.
Their skiff capsized Saturday night far out in the ocean, she was told.
The Coast Guard said one of its aircrews spotted the boy Monday morning and deployed a raft and supplies before contacting The Northwest Explorer.
Aghnaanga’s mother was listening to a radio transmission of the rescue Monday while other family members huddled around a speakerphone, Walker said.
“We all cried and jumped for joy when the captain announced on the radio, ‘We found a kid, he’s alive, he’s alive,’” she said. “Then we asked, ‘Where’s the rest of them?’”
Video of the rescue shows Aghnaanga in a bright yellow jacket kneeling atop the overturned skiff. The boat’s crew tosses him a line, tugging the skiff closer until they can pull him into a rescue basket.
He was experiencing symptoms of hypothermia when he got onto the boat, the Coast Guard said.
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The fishing boat crew warmed him with blankets and hot packs, its captain said.
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Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, contributed.