The open ocean is one of the deadliest environments on the planet. Remember The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water everywhere / not a drop to drink.” On top of no drinking water, you are at the mercy of the weather, must rely on whatever food you can catch from the ocean, and there’s the sheer psychological misery of looking for miles in all directions and seeing nothing.
All of which means that nobody should be able to survive a colossal 438 days drifting in the open ocean. But José Salvador Alvarenga somehow did.
Alvarenga is an experienced Salvadoran fisherman who set out on what should have been a normal 30-hour deep-sea fishing trip. Along for the day was 23-year-old Ezequiel Córdoba, who’d agreed to assist him.
Then a storm kicked up. His 23-foot boat was blown off course. For five days, the storm raged, and when it died down, his motor, electronics, anchor, lights, and fishing gear were all ruined. Alvarenga managed to get a frantic radio message out, and then his radio battery died. A search party was launched, but after two days they didn’t find anything and gave up. Alvarenga and Córdoba were on their own.
The ordeal begins
Weeks passed with the two men scavenging whatever food they could from the ocean, subsisting on fish, turtles, jellyfish, and seabirds. But don’t mistake this for some seafood buffet: with no cooking equipment, everything had to be eaten raw. Some water was collected from rainfall, but they were forced to drink turtle blood or their own urine.
Four months passed like this. Córdoba, poisoned from eating a raw seabird, refused to eat any more and starved to death. Alvarenga was left with his corpse, having made a solemn promise to him not to resort to cannibalism. Six days later, Alvarenga was losing his mind and conversing with the rotting body, and began considering following Córdoba to the other side.
But, in a moment of clarity, he realized he was going mad and dumped the body overboard. Alvarenga was raised a Catholic, but had been a party animal with little interest in Christianity. Meanwhile, Córdoba had been a committed evangelical Christian, with the pair having long conversations about God during their enforced isolation.
Alvarenga drew upon what Córdoba had told him, decided suicide was against God’s will, and became determined to survive, no matter what. Days stretched into weeks that became months. Occasionally, Alvarenga would see a container ship, but no matter what he did, they just cruised past him.
He began staring at the moon at night, counting time by its cycles. After 15 of them, he finally, miraculously spotted land – a desolate scrap of an inlet that’s part of the Marshall Islands. He dove from his boat and scrambled to shore, finding an isolated beach house. 438 days after setting out, he was saved.
But his ordeal wasn’t quite over. Skeptics said he appeared remarkably healthy for someone who’d spent over a year at sea. Doctors countered them with hard science, saying vitamin C in bird and turtle meat would have fended off scurvy, his backstory was corroborated by Salvadoran rescue services, and there’s the straightforward fact that he disappeared for over a year and ended up around 6,500 miles into the ocean on an isolated island.
You could call Alvarenga’s story a miracle. But, while he spent his time on the sea relying on his Christian faith to stay sane, he survived because he knew the ocean. Sure, God can watch over you, but when it comes to survival, your life is in your own hands.
