Three mariners were rescued from a remote atoll in the Pacific on Tuesday after a U.S. Navy plane spotted a sign reading “HELP” that the stranded men had built on a beach with palm fronds.
The group had been stranded for a week living off coconut meat on Pikelot Atoll—a 31-acre spit of land that is part of Micronesia. The trio, all in their 40s, had set out from Polowat Atoll on March 31 aboard a 20-foot skiff with the intention of fishing in the waters around Pikelot when their vessel was caught by swells and its motor was damaged, U.S. Coast Guard officials told CNN.
They managed to make it ashore on Pikelot but their radio battery died before they could alert anyone. So it wasn’t until Saturday that the Coast Guard “received a distress call from a relative of the three mariners reporting her three uncles had not returned.”
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A U.S. Navy P8-A reconnaissance jet dispatched from Kadena Air Force Base in Japan joined the search—which spanned 78,000 square nautical miles—and spotted the men’s sign on Sunday.
“In a remarkable testament to their will to be found, the mariners spelled out ‘HELP’ on the beach using palm leaves, a crucial factor in their discovery,” Lt. Chelsea Garcia, the search-and-rescue mission coordinator, said in a statement.
The jet was able to drop survival packages to the men before a Coast Guard cutter eventually reached them on April 9.
The group’s rescue comes four years after another group of three men was stranded on Pikelot after their boat ran out of fuel. The 2020 trio was saved when they made a message reading “SOS” on the beach that was spotted by a helicopter.
