A 15-year-old boy from Savoonga is recovering after surviving several days clinging to an overturned skiff in frigid Bering Sea waters near St. Lawrence Island, an ordeal that killed his brother and his cousin.
The teen had been out halibut fishing with his cousin and his older brother when their small skiff capsized. The boat departed Savoonga and had been expected back at St. Lawrence Island by roughly 3 a.m. Sunday. When the group failed to return, Alaska State Troopers alerted the U.S. Coast Guard around 8:30 p.m. Sunday that the party was overdue.
Coast Guard crews searched through the night and spotted the teenager around 10:30 a.m. Monday, kneeling atop the overturned skiff. Rescuers directed the fishing vessel Northwest Explorer, with a crew of 13, to pull him from the water.
“It’s unbelievable. It’s remarkable and it’s cold. The water is 10 degrees Celsius,” said Adam White, captain of the Northwest Explorer, in an interview Wednesday with Alaska’s News Source.
White said the boy was shaking from the cold when he was brought aboard but managed to describe what had happened to the other two people on the boat.
“Through the teeth chattering, he had mentioned that his brother was still under the skiff and then he said that in the previous night before our rescue that his cousin had slipped away off the top of the skiff,” White recalled.
Family members told Alaska’s News Source the teen had tried to hold onto the boat after the other two drowned. His mother said her younger son was the sole survivor of the three. She said her older son, who had been the boat’s captain, died after getting stuck under the vessel, and that the cousin survived for roughly a day alongside her younger son before he too died.
“Saturday, all the way to Tuesday, that kid was on top of that skiff,” White said.
The teen went without food or water for the entire time he waited to be found, according to his family. He is now back home in Savoonga.
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