A Russian man was rescued after 67 days adrift in a small boat in the cold Sea of Okhotsk, Russian authorities said on Tuesday (15).
The man’s brother and teenage son died in the ordeal, according to Russian state media RIA Novosti, which identified the survivor as 46-year-old Mikhail Pichugin.
Video of the rescue released by Russian prosecutors shows a bearded man in an orange life jacket floating in a small catamaran-type vessel with a red flag flying from a mast as rescuers work to reach him.
The Sea of Okhotsk is mainly surrounded by Russia’s eastern Siberia and the Kamchatka Peninsula. It usually freezes between October and March and is classified as the coldest sea in East Asia.
Two adult men and the 15-year-old son of one of them left on the catamaran on Aug. 9, prosecutors said.
“After some time, contact with them was lost, their location remained unknown,” said a spokeswoman for the transport prosecutor’s office of Russia’s Far East, Elena Krasnoyarova.
“On October 14, at around 22:00, the catamaran was spotted by a fishing boat passing in the Sea of Okhotsk, near the Ust-Khayryuzovo settlement in the Kamchatka region,” he added.
Prosecutors said they are still working to establish the circumstances surrounding the incident and investigating allegations of water traffic safety violations resulting in the negligent deaths of two or more people.
The rescued man’s wife told Russian state media that his weight may have played a role in his survival, as he weighed around 100 kg. She told RIA that Pichugin and his late brother and nephew had enough food to last about two weeks.
Pichugin will be taken to a hospital for medical treatment in the city of Magadan in Russia’s far east, RIA reported.
He is “in serious condition, emaciated, but conscious,” the director of the fishing company that found the boat adrift told RIA.
This content was originally published in Russian is rescued after almost 10 weeks adrift off the coast of Siberia on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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