Five fishers who spent 55 days adrift at sea arrived on Saturday at a port in the Galápagos after being rescued by a tuna boat, the Ecuadorian navy said on X.
The three Peruvians and two Colombians had been missing since mid-March and were found on 7 May by an Ecuadorian boat called Aldo.
The fishers had reported damage to the boat’s alternator two days after setting sail from Pucusana Bay, to the south of Peru’s capital Lima, the navy said in a separate post on Friday.
The failure caused communication and navigation tools to malfunction, Ecuadorian navy frigate captain María Fares told the Associated Press, adding that they had no power on the boat.
“They had no starter, lights and everything that a battery generates,” she said. To survive, they had to “take rusted water out of the engine [and] when a fish passed by, they caught it and parboiled it to eat”. They also drank rain and sea water to survive, Fares added.
The men are in stable condition and the navy said it was coordinating with local and foreign authorities to ensure their safe return to their respective countries.
Earlier this year, another Peruvian fisher, 61-year-old Máximo Napa, spent 95 days at sea alone. He was also rescued by an Ecuadorian vessel and returned to Lima in mid-March to be reunited with his family.
