--------------- The pair, aged in their 20s, are recovering in the Thursday Island Hospital, off the tip of the Cape York Peninsula, the Seven Network reported.

The men, dehydrated and exhausted, were spotted on Saturday by a routine border patrol and were soon plucked from the ocean by an Emergency Management Queensland helicopter flown by pilot Terry Gadenne. "When we winched down the rescue crewman into the water, the guy in the esky leapt out," Mr Gadenne told Seven. "He was desperately keen to get on and pulled him (the rescuer) down into the water, so he was pretty keen to get away from the ocean.

"When they got up (into the helicopter) they skolled two litres of water each within seconds." The men said 18 other people were on board a 10-metre wooden fishing vessel when the boat sank, Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokeswoman Tracey Jiggins said.

"They said when it sank they all went into the water and they didn't have any floatation device," she said. "It's remarkable that they survived, and that they were spotted by Coastwatch who were on a routine flight over the Torres Strait. "Given that they have been in the water 25 days, our Rescue Coordination Centre Australia has made an assessment that they would not be able to survive for that period of time without any form of a flotation device," she said.

Ms Jiggins did not know what food the pair had or what they did while inside the ice box. News Ltd reported the men survived by drinking rain water that gathered at the bottom of the box and by eating pieces of fish that were also in the container.

The pair could not say exactly where the boat sank, Ms Jiggins said.

Immigration officials have been sent to Thursday Island to investigate whether the boat was being used for fishing or a people-smuggling operation, Seven said. A spokeswoman for the Thursday Island Hospital told AAP she could not discuss the medical condition of the men. In July last year three Australian men spent 15 hours clinging to an esky after their boat sunk off the central Queensland coast.

The trio sang songs and kept each other awake during the ordeal, while one of the men plugged a hole in the bottom of the esky with his finger because the men were afraid bait could leak out and attract sharks.

AAP and Arjun Ramachandran

