Russian man rescued after 10 weeks stranded at sea, but his relatives ‘found dead on boat’

October 15, 2024, 4:05 p.m

Russian rescuers pull Mikhail Pichugin ashore after he was rescued by a fishing vessel after 67 days adrift in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

Photo: Alamy

A Russian man who spent more than two months at sea in a tiny inflatable boat was rescued, but the bodies of his brother and nephew were found on the ship.

The man was found in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, the coldest sea in East Asia, the local prosecutor’s office in Russia’s Far East said on Tuesday.

The man was not named in the report, but local media identified him as Mikhail Pichugin, 46, who went to the Sea of ​​Okhotsk in early August to watch whales in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk with his 49-year-old brother and 15-year-old brother. year old nephew.

The other two men were found dead on the small boat.

Media reports say the three men went to the Shantar Islands, off the northwestern shore of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

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They disappeared after heading back to Sakhalin Island on August 9. A rescue operation was launched but they could not be located.

The bodies of two people were found on the boat, a 49-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy.

Photo: Alamy

According to local reports, the three had only a small pack of food and about 5 gallons of water with them as they drifted.

According to press reports, Pichugin weighed only about 50 kg when he was found, after losing half his body weight.

Pichugin has not yet provided details on how he survived or how his brother and nephew died.

When the crew of a fishing vessel noticed a tiny pontoon on the radar, they initially thought it was a buoy or a piece of scrap, reports the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, but to be sure, they turned on their searchlights and were shocked when they saw you. Pichugin.

The recording published by the prosecutor’s office shows an emaciated man in a life jacket shouting desperately, “Come here!” and the crew working to pull him to safety.

“I have no strength left,” he said when he was rescued.

Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into the incident on suspicion of violating safety rules that resulted in death.