Rescuers found a 15-year-old who had gone missing on a fishing trip with two others, sitting on top of a capsized boat in the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia.
The boat initially left the village of Savoonga on Alaska’s St. Lawrence Island, 90 miles southeast of Russia’s Siberian coast, on Sept. 4.
The boat was due to return to Savoonga Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
At about 10:30 a.m. Monday, the Coast Guard and a good Samaritan vessel found the boy, the sole survivor, sitting on the overturned boat roughly 4 miles east of St. Lawrence Island.
Two others who had been on the fishing trip with the boy were recovered from the water unresponsive and ultimately declared dead.
The survivor was taken for hypothermia treatment in Nome, Alaska, along with the two deceased, the Coast Guard said.
“That is one remarkably tough kid, is all I can say. … We all felt such joy seeing (the teen) alive but so heartbreaking to find the remains of the other two,” Adam White, captain of the Northwest Explorer good Samaritan boat, told the Anchorage Daily News.
The Coast Guard did not identify the survivor or the dead.
But Vina Kulowiyi said the survivor is her son Derek Parker Aghnaanga, who had accompanied his brother Sidney Kulowiyi, 35, and one other to go catch halibut, according to The New York Times.
The other decedent was a cousin of the two brothers, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
Derek Toolie-Noongwook, a relative of Derek and the two deceased, relayed what he heard from the 15-year-old and told NBC News that “once the motor got caught in the fishing line, they tried to untangle it, but they couldn’t because of how bad it was tangled. So they were just sitting, and then later on at the end of the night, the weather got bad and the boat flipped.”
While the 35-year-old Mr. Kulowiyi got caught under the boat and couldn’t escape, Derek and his cousin were able to get on top. Mr. Toolie-Noongwook told NBC News that the cousin began to panic overnight following the capsizing and “he jumped ship. And he only swam 5 or 6 feet, and he sadly had drowned.”
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