Migrants lost at sea for 15 days resort to cannibalism by eating dead passengers to survive



A group of refugees who were cast adrift at sea for more than two weeks survived by eating dead passengers, it has emerged.

The 33 Dominican migrants were trying to reach Puerto Rico by boat but were cast adrift after their captain became lost.

Only four survived the ordeal and admitted they are only alive after eating fellow migrants.

The crew were told by their captain not to bring any food or water aboard when they set off from Sanchez on the one-day journey to the U.S territory on October 17.

Dominican Gregorio Marizan and three other men survived 15 days at sea by eating their dead shipmates

But the captain abandoned ship after two days, admitting they were lost while the boat ran out of fuel, casting the group adrift.



The only woman in the group and one of five people to be rescued, died in hospital after they were found near the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Speaking from his hospital bed, survivor Gregorio Maria Marizan said the group tried to sustain themselves on rain and seawater .

Saulio Marizan recovers in hospital but his brother Emmanuel died during the ordeal

Famished and dehydrated, they watched migrant after migrant die, each time waiting 15 to 20 minutes before throwing the body overboard.

The survivor said the decision to eat the dead shipmates was not an easy one to take and did so in order to live.



'Imagine, 15 days without food, without water. I'm a sailor, a fisherman - they were all yelling at me to do something,' he said.



'I always try to be prepared, so I had brought my knife along. We hadn't brought food because it was supposed to be a quick trip.



'We had nothing to eat. We had to eat him, to save our own lives. We cut from his leg and chest. We cut little pieces and swallowed them like pills.

'It's like beef, almost the same. At the skin there is like half an inch of yellow fat, then the fibres.'

The divorced father-of-three said he and his brothers Saulio, 27, and Emmanuel, 30, were forced to attempt the treacherous crossing in search of a better life.

The elder brother Emmanuel didn't survive the journey.



Hundreds of Dominicans take to the sea each year in small boats, many of them homemade, trying to reach Puerto Rico through the dangerous Mona Passage.

Thanking God for being alive, Marizan said he wanted one of the family to stay alive to tell the story.



Dominican Minister of Tourism Francisco Javier Garcia said the migrants ate from the corpse of the last person to die.

Franklin Paoulino and the group were forced to eat their dead shipmates in order to survive

Mr Garcia said the bodies of the other dead were thrown into the sea and the five were rescued by U.S. Coast Guard helicopter on Saturday and taken to a hospital on the island of Providenciales.



'The surviving four are dehydrated and have swollen legs but are expected to recover,' he said after visiting the survivor.

In 2004, 36 survivors in a group of 87 migrants drank breast milk, sea water and ate human flesh in desperate acts to survive.