Emergency crews in Russia rescued a man adrift at sea for more than two months in an inflatable boat, but his brother and nephew have died, officials said Tuesday.
According to the prosecutor’s office in the far east of Russia, the man was rescued Monday in the Sea of Okhotsk after a fishing vessel spotted him off the Kamchaka Peninsula, the Associated Press reported.
Russian news media identified the man as Mikhail Pichugin, 46, who in early August had set out on a whale-watching expedition with his 49-year-old brother and 15-year-old nephew. Their bodies were reportedly found in the boat when the Angel fishing vessel rescued Pichugin, per the AP.
Media reports said the three men traveled to the Shantar Islands off the northwestern shore of the Sea of Okhotsk in early August. They went missing after setting off for Sakhalin Island from Cape Perovsky in the Khabarovsk region on Aug. 9. A rescue effort was launched but failed to locate them.
The three men had only a small food ration and about 5.2 gallons of water when the boat’s engine failed and they were left adrift, according to Russian media reports.
The crew of the fishing vessel did not immediately realize the blip on their radar was a boat but instead thought it might be a buoy or piece of junk, the news reports said. They were shocked when they used their spotlight and found a starving man in a boat.
Pichugin reportedly weighed just 110 pounds at the time of his rescue, having lost half of his body weight.
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He didn’t immediately say how he managed to survive in the Sea of Okhotsk, the coldest sea in East Asia and known for its gales, or how his brother and nephew died. The crew of the ship that rescued Pichugin found their bodies tied to the boat to prevent them from being washed away by the sea, news reports said.
When Pichugin’s boat was found, it was drifting about 11 nautical miles of Kamchatka’s shore, about 540 nautical miles from their point of origin on the other side of the Sea of Okhotsk.
Video released by the prosecutor’s office showed an emaciated man desperately shouting “come here!” at his rescuers, the AP reported.
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“I have no strength left,” Pichugin told the rescue crew as they worked to get him to safety.
Prosecutors say they have opened an investigation into the incident and are eying charges related to safety rule violations that resulted in deaths.
Pichugin was taken to an emergency care unit at the Magadan hospital, the AP reported. Chief doctor Yuri Lednev told reporters he was suffering from dehydration and hypothermia, but was in stable condition.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.