Kiribati men survive 119 days in open boat

Press, 25 August 1986, Page 8

Kiribati men survive 119 days in open boat

Special correspondent Auckland

Three Kiribati fishermen survived 119 days in an open boat in the central Pacific by catching sharks with their bare hands. Their 5m boat’s engine failed during a day-fishing expedition for their church on April 4. The men drifted 700 kilometres before they were found off the island of Nauru by a fisherman attracted by a flock of birds and keen to have some of the fish obviously surrounding their boat. During the week-end, Taka Taka, aged 40, and Tatiete Kannangaki, and Bakatarawa labe, both aged 20, were reunited with their families who had long given them up for dead.

A policeman who interviewed them on Nauru earlier this month, Sergeant Paul Aingilea, said yesterday that the men were severely malnourished by their fish-and-

water diet He said the trio had told him their motor broke down in sight of their village on April 4 about 8.30 p.m., but they could not make the shore and drifted east-south-east

They had already caught about 100 tuna for a church function and they had a thermos of water. When the water ran out they emptied an 80-litre petrol tank and prayed for three days for rain. When it came, they caught it in their raincoats.

As days turned into weeks the men ran out of tuna. Sergeant Aingilea said the men caught some more fish but eventually sharks snatched all their hooks.

About a month after they had started their journey, the desperately hungry men could do no more than pray for help. “They were very religious people,” Sergeant Aingilea said. “They prayed

all night and the next morning a shark came alongside the boat “They grabbed the fins and then used a small club to kill it They ate it there and then — raw shark . . .”

Sergeant Aingilea said the men even drank the blood from the shark.

“They caught about 25 to 30 sharks by using their hands.”

Apparently the 5m open-topped wooden boat several times drifted within a few kilometres of the island of Banaba (Ocean Island), formerly the site of British Phosphate Commission operations.

But the men had no paddle with which to guide the vessel towards the shore, and nobody saw them. Banaba is 400 kilometres west of Tarawa in Kiribati, and 260 kilometres east of Nauru.

For several weeks, fickle currents carried the fishermen back and forth

between Banaba and Nauru.

The men prayed intensely throughout their ordeal. Two were Protestants and one a Catholic. Sergeant Aingilea said they agreed to pray for their needs separately.

He said the men were only found because their barnacle-covered boat was being followed by small fish, sharks and — as they neared Nauru — a flock of birds. A Nauruan fisherman decided he wanted some of the fishing action and motored towards them to hear their shouts for help.

They reached Nauru at the beginning of this month.

Sergeant Aingilea said Mr Taka, who had previously fitted trousers with a 44-inch waist, was so thin he fitted size 34 when found. One of the younger men shed 12 inches around the waist All three were in Nauru’s hospital for more than a week.