The US coastguard said on Monday it had rescued a 15-year-old boy who clung to an overturned fishing vessel in the Bering Sea for days after the boat capsized off Alaska’s St Lawrence Island. His older brother and cousin drowned.
The three had last been seen leaving the island in an 18-foot fishing vessel on Friday. They were expected back early on Sunday but failed to return, prompting the coastguard to open a search on Sunday evening.
An aircrew found the sole survivor atop the overturned vessel on Monday afternoon. He was hoisted to safety near St Lawrence Island, a remote Alaskan island in the Bering Sea that lies closer to Russia than to the mainland United States.
The boy was pulled from the water by the crew of a fishing boat, The Northwest Explorer, before being airlifted. Rescuers said the bodies of his brother and cousin were recovered after the teenager was brought to safety.
The two others died sometime after the small boat flipped, the coastguard said. The waters of the Bering Sea remain frigid year-round, and survival times for people exposed to them are typically measured in hours rather than days.
St Lawrence Island sits in the northern Bering Sea, home to a small population of Alaska Native communities who rely heavily on subsistence fishing and hunting. Boating accidents are a recurring hazard in the region’s cold and often unpredictable waters.
Capsizings in remote waters routinely stretch rescue resources across vast distances, as seen in earlier large-scale search operations for missing fishing crews. The coastguard has not released the identities of those involved.
The survivor’s condition was not detailed. Authorities said the recovery of the two bodies concluded the active search effort in the area.