How can ANYONE survive 13 months adrift on the ocean? The answer, as a newly rescued castaway has revealed, is by drinking turtle blood - and having awesome mental fortitude



Jose Ivan left Mexico in December 2012 for a fishing trip to El Salvador

But disaster struck when the engines of 24ft boat lost their propellers



Swept 8,000 miles west to the Marshall Islands, a former US territory



Solitude: Tom Hanks in the Hollywood film Cast Away

The biggest problem facing those cast adrift on the open seas is succinctly summed up by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his poem The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner: ‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.’

A human being can survive for around three weeks without food if they have water, but will perish after just three to five days without fluids.

In the absence of drinking water, a man who was last week washed up on the shores of a remote Pacific Island after surviving on his tiny, broken-down boat for an astonishing 13 months, kept himself alive by a means not available to Coleridge’s cursed seamen — he drank turtle blood.

Jose Ivan left his native Mexico on Christmas Day 2012 for a short shark-fishing trip to El Salvador with a companion. But not long after setting sail, disaster struck when the engines of the 24 ft fibreglass boat lost their propellers.

The two men were left to the mercy of the ocean currents, which proceeded to sweep the boat 8,000 miles west to the Marshall Islands — a former American territory halfway between Hawaii and Australia, and one of the most isolated spots on the planet.

Ivan’s companion died several months ago, leaving him to eke out a desperate living alone, drinking rainwater when it was available and feeding off passing birds, fish and turtles, which he caught and tore apart with his bare hands (no fishing rods were found on his boat).

When it didn’t rain, Ivan was forced to drink turtle blood. It is rich in iron and proteins, and provides the same sort of nutrition as steak and eggs. It also provides a measure of rehydration, though not as effectively as rainwater.

Discovery: Two Marshall islanders stumbled upon the man - half-starved, with long hair and an unkempt beard - and his boat last Thursday, after the tides miraculously deposited them on a coral reef at Ebon Atoll (pictured)

It’s not known if he ate the turtles’ eyes, but experts advise they are the most fluid-rich part of the reptile’s body.

When Ivan, whose ordeal has parallels with the Tom Hanks film Cast Away, was eventually discovered, there was a turtle lurking in the hold of his battered boat.

Two Marshall islanders stumbled upon him — half-starved, with long hair and an unkempt beard — and his boat last Thursday, after the tides miraculously deposited them on a coral reef at Ebon Atoll.

Severely sunburnt, dehydrated and emaciated, Ivan was first cared for at a government property, where he was fed and rehydrated.

Because he didn’t speak English — and none of the 700 islanders spoke Spanish — he had to use drawings and gestures to explain his astonishing story to the mayor, Ione deBrum.

Mr Debrum said: ‘We’ve been feeding him nutritious island food and he’s getting better. He has pain in both knees. Otherwise, he’s OK.’

Ivan also has low blood pressure, but there seems to be no sign of any long-lasting physical effects of the ordeal, even after spending so long at sea.

This morning, he is due to arrive at Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. In a cruel irony, the archipelago’s only plane capable of landing on Ebon is undergoing maintenance, so Ivan is having to travel by boat. One can only imagine his thoughts at being on the ocean again.

‘I just want to get back home to Mexico, but I don’t even know where I am — I’m tired and sad,’ said Ivan, on a crackly phoneline from the Marshall Islands at the weekend. ‘I’m desperate and I want to get back to Mexico, but I don’t know how.’

Then, revealing that he had not lost his sense of humour, he added: ‘If someone gets me home, I’m sure my boss will pay.’

Ola Fjeldstad, a Norwegian anthropology student working on Ebon who spoke to Ivan, said: ‘His condition isn’t good, but he’s getting better.’

Map: Jose Ivan left his native Mexico on Christmas Day 2012 for a short shark-fishing trip to El¿¿¿Salvador with a companion. But not long after setting sail, disaster struck when the engines of the boat lost their propellers

What a research opportunity Jose Ivan must present to any anthropologist in search of a golden case study. For if Ivan’s story is true, he is one of the longest surviving castaways in history.

The physical challenges associated with being adrift at sea are severely testing, but not insuperable. In the warm, fertile waters of the Pacific, there can be food available in the form of turtles and fish, which often congregate near small boats to shelter beneath them. They can be caught by hand.

However, the mental ordeal is, if anything, worse — a debilitating cocktail of despair and delusion brought on by prolonged exposure, starvation and lack of water. The victim does not know if they might be found or whether they are facing a lingering death.



Other castaways have died after much shorter times on the open sea. In 2012, two Panamanian fishermen succumbed to heat stroke and dehydration after 28 days.

When it didn't rain, Ivan was forced to drink turtle blood. It is rich in iron and proteins, and provides the same sort of nutrition as steak and eggs

Their surviving companion, Adrian Vasquez, sued the owners of a passing cruise ship for apparently ignoring their desperate cries a fortnight before he was rescued.

Their tiny 10 ft boat, the Fifty Cents, was on a short trip from Panama to Costa Rica when the engine failed and the boat drifted west to the Galapagos Islands, where the lone survivor was picked up.

The trio’s problem wasn’t food — they still had their fishing nets — but lack of water. Vasquez survived only thanks to a providential rain shower when he was at death’s door.

In recent years, the closest anyone has come to surviving as long as Jose Ivan are three other Mexicans, also adrift at sea near the Marshall Islands.

They survived on fish, birds and rainwater for nine months in 2006 — their mental health was sustained by a copy of the Bible.

One survivor, Jesus Vidana, said: ‘We ate raw seagulls, ducks and fish; we ate everything raw — any fish that came near the boat, we grabbed it and gulped it down. We were able to drink rainwater because it rained every day.

‘But twice we almost sank. The waves washed into the boat and we thought we were going to die. Then suddenly we saw ships going by and we’d reached the other side [of the Pacific].’

One of the most graphic descriptions of a rudderless life at sea comes from Briton Douglas Robertson, who was 18 when he was stranded with his younger siblings — twin boys aged ten — and their parents and a friend in the Pacific in 1971.

Issue: The biggest problem facing those cast adrift on the open seas is summed up by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (pictured) in his poem The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner: 'Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink'

His father, Dougal Robertson, was sailing their boat, the Lucette, from Panama to the Galapagos Islands when it was holed by a pod of killer whales.



After 38 days, the castaways were picked up 300 miles from land by a fishing trawler. When the whales struck, the Robertsons took refuge in a life raft, but it deflated after 17 days, forcing them to transfer to an even smaller dinghy.

They only had six lemons, ten oranges, a tin of biscuits, a bag of onions and half a pound of glucose sweets to sustain them. More worryingly, there was only enough water for ten days.

No one knew they had gone adrift, and sharks staked out their dangerously overcrowded vessel. And just like Jose Ivan, the family depended on turtle blood for survival.

After their rescue, Douglas said: ‘You have to knock it back quickly otherwise it sets into blancmange. It has an after-taste that makes you want to retch.’

How strong the temptation towards cannibalism must have been for Jose Ivan when his companion died; how noble to stick to turtle

It helped, too, that his mother, Lyn, had trained as a nurse. She knew about the healing properties of turtle oil (turtle flesh is rich in it), which she rubbed into the painful, saltwater boils that the family developed as a result of constantly sitting in seawater. There was only one dry seat in the boat, and the six of them took turns sitting on it.

Crucially, Lyn was aware of the danger of drinking the fluid at the bottom of the dinghy — a polluted combination of blood, turtle offal and rainwater.

This would have been poisonous if taken orally, yet taken rectally by enema it would not impair the digestive system.

Lyn kept them all hydrated by using an enema tube that they crafted from the rungs of a ladder.

But at least the poor Robertsons didn’t have to deal with the ultimate castaway horror — cannibalism.

In 1884, an English yacht, Mignonette, set out for Sydney from Southampton, but when it capsized in a gale off the Cape of Good Hope, the crew took to a lifeboat.

After 18 days at sea, living off turnips that they’d salvaged and turtles, two of the starving men resolved to kill and eat another crew member.

After their rescue, the two men were convicted in a historic legal case (R v Dudley and Stephens), when it was ruled that necessity could be no defence to murder.

How strong the temptation towards cannibalism must have been for Jose Ivan when his companion died; how noble to stick to turtle.

