Is There Any Truth to the Story of Castaway Jose Salvador Alvarenga?
Sometime in late 2012, Jose Salvador Alvarenga set off from Mexico on what was supposed to be a day-long sea voyage in the Pacific Ocean to catch a few sharks. But instead of a quick return home, he washed up on the Marshall Islands some 13 months later, on Jan. 30, 2014. At least, that's the story.
Alvarenga claims he set sail with a teenage shipmate from Costa Azul, Mexico, sometime in late 2012 — the date varies by report. But the shark-fishing expedition was botched after their ship lost power and a storm swept the sailors off course, he attests. After more than a year at sea during which Alvarenga says he ate birds to stay alive and watched his partner die, his barnacle-coated vessel wound up on Ebon Atoll, a 2.2-square-mile slab of land that is a part of the Marshall Islands.
The Mexican government has confirmed the castaway's identity as Alvarenga, according to CNN, and no one has come forth with factual proof so far disproving Alvarenga's story. But as officials try to piece together details of the castaway's tale, a big part of the verification process will involve the movements of the Pacific Ocean's currents, determining whether they would have shipped him from the Mexican coast almost all the way to Australia.
This aspect of Alvarenga's tale seems plausible.
"If he was coming off of Mexico and he lost power and he was adrift, then the current would take him in the direction of the Marshall Islands," Robert Freeman, public affairs officer for the oceanographer of the Navy, told Mashable .
As you can see in the above map , cold water travels down the coast of California and Mexico until it reaches subtropical waters, at which point it heats up and banks west until it reaches Japan. This is how Pacific waters move above the equator, and because the Marshall Islands sit seven degrees north of the line, Freeman said Alvarenga's story is in the realm of possibility. However, he questions why it would have taken the man 13 months to arrive where he did.
Other skepticisms have also cropped up, such as why Alvarenga appeared to be in fairly good health for a man who hadn't eaten a normal meal in the past year.
The specifics of Alvarenga's path — whether he was actually at sea for over a year and other details from his journey — are pending validation, and the world will likely learn more after the 37-year-old gets out of a local hospital , where he has been resting. But, so far, naysayers don't have a strong enough case.
