Russian whale watcher rescued after 67 days at sea on inflatable boat

Oct 17, 2024

A Russian man survived more than two months adrift in the frigid Sea of Okhotsk in a small inflatable dinghy — and was rescued while still holding onto his dead brother and nephew’s bodies, according to local reports.

Mikhail Pichugin, 45, was finally found 67 days after his engine failed while on an ill-fated whale-watching expedition by a Russian trawler in Russia’s far east, video obtained by East2West Media Group shows.

The desperate man, who reportedly lost more than 100 pounds, can be seen in an orange life vest waving down the fisherman in the dark and telling rescuers that he is very weak.

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“All right, hold on,” a fisherman yells back to him, according to a translation of the clip. “Just sit tight for now.”

Pichugin also still had the bodies of his elder brother, Sergey Pichugin, 49, and his son Ilya, 16, on board the dinghy. The pair both died while they were at sea.

The survivor and the corpses were brought aboard the fishing boat and brought back to the port city of Magadan, where Pichugan is recovering.

“When they said [Mikhail] was alive, I thought we were waiting for a miracle, and it happened,” his 38-year-old ex-wife Ekaterina Pichugina told KP-Irkutsk, according to East2West Media.

The captain of the fishing boat called her and told her Puchugin had “received medical assistance” and “his condition is satisfactory,” she said.

The trio were heading home from a multi-day trip to the remote Shantar Islands, a renowned feeding ground for whales, back to the city of Okha on the island of Sakhalin when the engines of the inflatable catamaran’s engines gave out.

Russian authorities searched for the vessel for more than a month before giving up, believing there was no way they could have survived the stormy seas.

The vessel drifted at least 625 miles before it was spotted about 14 miles off the village of Ust-Khairyuzovo, on the Kamchatka peninsula.

“There are two real miracles here,” Dmitry Lisitsyn, head of Sakhalin Environment Watch, said.

“The first is that such a small, uncontrolled boat was not capsized in the stormy autumn Sea of Okhotsk after more than two months of drifting. I can’t wrap my head around how that is possible. The boat certainly went through several strong storms and remained afloat – this is something incredible.

“The second is that someone on this boat survived,” Lisitsyn continued. “The fact that two people died — a father and son — is very sad, but not surprising.

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“But how the third person – their uncle and brother — could survive in the icy, stormy sea for more than two months is simply beyond comprehension. It truly is a miracle,” he said.

Once he’s out of the hospital, Mikhail could face legal consequences and even possibly jail time, as his boat is not permitted under Russian law to travel beyond two nautical miles from shore.

“The Far Eastern Transport Prosecutor’s Office is establishing the circumstances of the incident, and is also monitoring the progress of the investigation of the criminal case,” law enforcement officials said on Monday, according to a post on Telegram.