At sea, they ate fish that birds spat out

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(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-22 07:46

Two men who spent 25 days lost at sea in a giant icebox survived their ordeal thanks to rainwater from tropical storms and fish spat out by passing birds, a report said yesterday.

The men, who were rescued by helicopter on Saturday, are still being interviewed by Australian immigration officials, who are hoping to clarify how they came to be drifting in shark-infested waters off the country's northern coast.

The pair told The Sydney Morning Herald they drank only rainwater and ate small fish regurgitated by seabirds after their Thai fishing boat broke up, possibly in Indonesian waters, in huge waves on December 23.

"For 10 days, nothing to eat," one of the men told the paper through an interpreter. "Then two big seabirds came and vomited some small fish - about six or seven little fish, and that's all."

The pair, aged 22 and 24 and thought to be from Myanmar, said 18 of their crewmates from Thailand and Myanmar were lost when the 10-meter wooden fishing boat went down.

Australian officials are questioning the men but have said it could take days to ascertain their nationality and immigration status.

Meanwhile, doubts have surfaced about the men's incredible survival tale after they were released from a Queensland hospital on Tuesday.

Doctor Paul Luckin, a Royal Australian Navy Reserve commander and survival expert, said only a regular supply of fresh water would have kept them alive.

"But for them to be able to capture rainwater in that esky (icebox) would mean the bottom of that esky would have to be fairly clean - in other words free of saltwater and dead fish," he told national news agency AAP.

An unnamed source told The Australian that doctors felt the men were in "remarkable" condition, given their claimed exposure to the elements for almost a month.

But Peter Heath, general manager at the helicopter rescue company that picked the men up, said they were both dehydrated and at least one was suffering from ulcerations.

"The first one, as soon as the rescue crewman got close to him, the bloke jumped at him," he told AFP. "He was in reasonable condition."

But he said the second man was wearing a lifejacket and floating in the water tied to the icebox when the helicopter arrived. "He was a bit worse. He needed to be picked up fairly carefully. And he needed to have first aid once he was in the aircraft to stop him going into shock," Heath said.

AFP

(China Daily 01/22/2009 page10)