PAUL MILLER/epa/Corbis
Three teenage boys were found alive in a life boat north-east of Fiji after being lost at sea for 50 days. Their families had already held a memorial service for them, yet the boys managed to survive on coconuts, a seagull they caught and seawater.
On October 5, Samuel Perez and Filo Filo, both 15, and Edward Nasau, 14, disappeared from Atafu atoll, part of a New Zealand territory. A search by New Zealand’s air force failed to locate the boys, but after their boat had drifted 800 miles they were rescued by a wayward fishing boat that happened to travel into an area it didn’t normally venture. The fishing boat spotted the boys’ vessel and upon investigation found the three boys in surprisingly good shape, although they were understandably on the skinny side.
(See the Google Earth discovery, “Lost (and Found) at Sea.”)
Reportedly, the boys had gone several days without fresh rain water to drink and had just begun to dip into the ocean–a dangerous move that if continued could have brought a much more unpleasant end to their Hollywood-perfect story. Luckily for the boys (and the movie script that is inevitably going to be written) they were pulled aboard the fishing boat and attended to by a medic with an intravenous drip. They are being taken to a hospital to be treated for severe sunburn. (via the Guardian)