Man lost on the Pacific for '16 months' reaches
shore on remote Ebon atoll In a story similar to the plot of the film
Castaway starring Tom Hanks, Jose Ivan
was found on the atoll having floated 8,000 miles
from Mexico Tom Hanks in the 2000 film Castaway By ANTONIA MOLLOY Friday 31 January 2014 An emaciated man, who claimed to have spent 16
months adrift at sea, has been rescued after being
washed up on a remote Pacific atoll. The man, with a dishevelled appearance, was
spotted by two locals on Thursday when his 24-
foot fibreglass boat with propellerless engines
washed up on to the reef at Ebon Atoll, after
floating more than 12,500 kilometres (8,000
miles) from Mexico. "His condition isn't good, but he's getting better,"
Ola Fjeldstad, a  Norwegian anthropology student
doing research on Ebon, told AFP by telephone.
"He has a long beard and hair." Fjeldstad said that the castaway, who was clad
only in a pair of ragged underpants, claims to have
left Mexico for Salvador in September 2012 with a
companion, who died at sea several months ago. The man, who speaks only Spanish, was able to
provide merely sketchy details of his survival, but
said his name was Jose Ivan. "The boat is really scratched up and looks like it
has been in the water for a long time," said the
researcher. Jose Ivan was found washed up on Ebon Atoll
(inset) which is part of the Marshall Islands Ivan appears to have survived by eating turtles,
birds and fish and by drinking turtle blood when
there was no rain. He caught the animals with his bare hands as there
was no fishing gear on board the boat. There was a
turtle on the boat when it landed at Ebon. Perhaps surprisingly, Ivan's story is not an
anomaly and there have been various tales of
survival in the vast Pacific. In 2006, three Mexicans made international
headlines when they were discovered drifting in
their boat in the middle of the ocean, nine months
after setting out on a shark-fishing expedition. And in 1992, two fishermen from Kiribati were at
sea for 177 days before coming ashore in Samoa. The man is thought to have floated 8,000
miles from Mexico to the other side of the
Pacific Fictional tales of survival have also captured the
public imagination in recent years. Yann Martel's
best-selling 2001 novel, Life of Pi, tells the story
of an Indian boy cast adrift in the Pacific after a
shipwreck that claims the lives of his family and, in
2000, Tom Hanks played a man stranded on an uninhabited Pacific island in the film Castaway. According to Fjeldstad, the Marshall islanders
who discovered Ivan took him to the main island
on the atoll to meet Mayor Ione de Brum, who put
in a call to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in
Majuro. Officials at the Foreign Ministry said on Friday
they were waiting to get more details and for the
man to be brought to Majuro, AFP reported. The government has only one plane that can land
at Ebon, but it is currently down for maintenance
and is not expected to return to service until
Tuesday at the earliest. Officials are considering
sending a boat to pick up Ivan. He's staying at the local council house and a family
is feeding him," said Fjeldstad, who added that the
man had a basic health check and was found to
have low blood pressure. However, he did not appear to have any life-
threatening illness and was able to walk with the
aid of men on the island. "We've been giving him a lot of water, and he's
gaining strength," said the Norwegian.