Mayor Island, which was likely in sight of the fisherman when he was rescued after signaling a passing boat with his watch. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Officials are calling the survival of a fisherman lost at sea an “absolute miracle” after he fell overboard off the New Zealand coast.
According to reports, the man, who hasn’t been named, fell into the ocean on January 2 off New Zealand’s North Island while he was attempting to reel in a marlin. Although his his boat was idling, the fisherman was unable to catch it as it moved slowly away from him. Eventually, after realizing the vessel was well out of reach, he decided to strike out for the Aldermen Islands, which sit around 35 miles off the North Island’s east coast. For the next 23 hours, he struggled to keep his head above water.
In a statement to media, Whangamatā Police Sgt. Will Hamilton said that the man “endured a cold night in the ocean, too exhausted to keep swimming.” When dawn broke after what surely felt like the longest night of the fisherman’s life, he was able to alert three other fishermen aboard another boat using the reflection from his watch.
When the trio of rescuers ventured closer, they, according to Hamilton, found the man “desperately trying to get their attention using the reflection of the sun on his watch.”
Hamilton went on to say that when the fisherman was finally rescued, he was hypothermic and exhausted. He was met by paramedics at Whangamatā Marina.
The fisherman was pulled from the water near Mayor Island after spending nearly 24 hours lost at sea. Image: Wikimedia Commons
“The boaties did an absolute stellar job and without a doubt saved this man’s life,” Hamilton said. “Without the quick actions of the three gentlemen that retrieved him, this certainly would have had a tragic outcome… It is an absolute miracle the fisherman is still alive after the ordeal.”
Newshub, a media outlet out of New Zealand, reported that the skipper of the rescue boat is a man named Max White. White told Newshub that pulling the man from the sea was “definitely an experience we won’t forget,” and that it was “one that could’ve gone either way, but [he is] glad it’s got a happy ending.”
One of the rescuers believes it was fate that they ended up within eyesight of the man’s glinting watch.
“When you start going back and piecing through the day, little things where we may have ended up in different locations – it was kind of fate, I suppose, on how we ended up there,” he said to Newshub. “We set out in the early morning and got through to the afternoon and we sort of saw a glistening, probably 600 meters away from the boat at the time. As we got closer, I think it was Max who said, ‘I think that’s a person’ and it was actually me who said, ‘Surely not.’ I mean, we were 10 miles off the back of Mayor Island and not a boat in sight, but sure enough, as we got closer, it was quite obvious that someone was waving their arms.”
Authorities are currently hunting for the missing boat, but if he’s a superstition man, the rescued fisherman will keep a close eye on that lucky watch. “The boat may be missing,” Hamilton said, “but the fisherman still has his watch.”
