A Fisherman Was Found Alive After A Week Adrift In A Tiny Boat Near The Cook Islands

A fisherman who disappeared from Pukapuka Island in the Cook Islands on June 11 was found alive on Friday by a Royal New Zealand Air Force surveillance aircraft after spending more than a week adrift alone in the South Pacific in a 4-metre aluminium skiff, a boat roughly the size of a large dining table, open to the elements, with no shelter from the equatorial sun or the ocean.

The RNZAF P-8A Poseidon crew spotted him during a search and rescue operation in the northern Cook Islands.

He was sitting in the boat wearing a blue T-shirt, black shorts and a sun visor. When the plane flew over, he waved his hands.

Then he grabbed an oar and waved that too. Nearby fishing vessels indicated they could retrieve him and did.

The man is believed to be Pone Apiuta, a 42-year-old father from Pukapuka, one of the most isolated inhabited islands in the Pacific, approximately 1,140 kilometres northwest of Rarotonga.

He had set out on June 11 for what was supposed to be a day of fishing off the northwest side of the island. He never came back.

Police were alerted at 1:30 in the morning of June 12 when he still had not returned home. His family and the Pukapuka community had been waiting for news since.

He had minimal safety or survival equipment when he left. He was sitting in the boat waving when they found him more than a week later.

The Cook Islands and New Zealand coordinate search and rescue across the vast stretches of Pacific Ocean that surround the outer islands, where distances between landmasses are enormous and the search areas involved dwarf any comparable operations.

The P-8A Poseidon, a maritime patrol aircraft, is designed specifically for ocean surveillance at the scale these rescues require. Finding a 4-metre boat in the northern Cook Islands waters after nine days is the kind of outcome these operations are built for and do not always produce.

He waved an oar. He is home.