A 15-year-old boy miraculously survived the unthinkable: a harrowing two days atop an overturned fishing boat in Alaska’s frigid Bering Sea, enduring darkness, bad weather, and 50-degree water before rescuers finally found him.
Derek Parker Aghnaanga left the remote village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island on September 4th with his 35-year-old brother, Sidney Kulowiyi, and a cousin for a halibut fishing trip aboard an 18-foot skiff. The boat was expected home early Sunday. It never arrived. And tragically, the 15-year-old boy’s family members would die before rescue.
According to Aghnaanga’s family, conditions deteriorated Saturday night. Sidney was attempting to get his younger brother a life jacket when he became tangled in lines as the skiff flipped. Aghnaanga and his cousin managed to climb onto the overturned hull, but Sidney was lost. The cousin remained with Aghnaanga through the night before eventually slipping away and drowning.
Aghnaanga was alone.
“He was sitting on his knees, just praying the whole time,” his brother Darren Toolie-Noongwook told NBC News. “He said he believed he was going to make it.”
Poor visibility initially hampered the search. On Monday, a Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules crew spotted Aghnaanga clinging to the capsized skiff approximately four miles east of St. Lawrence Island. The aircraft dropped survival equipment and flares before directing the nearby fishing vessel Northwest Explorer toward him.
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Rescue video shows Aghnaanga, wearing a yellow jacket, kneeling on the hull. Crew members threw him a line, pulled the skiff alongside and hauled him aboard in a rescue basket. He was suffering from hypothermia and was immediately wrapped in blankets and warmed with hot packs.
“That’s one tough kid,” Northwest Explorer captain Adam White said.
The bodies of Kulowiyi and the cousin, whose family has not publicly released his name, were also recovered. Aghnaanga and the two victims were transported to Nome.
Coast Guard pilot Lt. Cmdr. Jonathon Resch called finding the teenager “nothing short of miraculous.”
“People don’t flip boats and survive nights,” he said.
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