For days, a 15-year-old boy clung to an overturned skiff as it bobbed in a remote patch of the vast Bering Sea off Alaska after it had capsized, killing his older brother and a cousin.
When the three failed to return as expected on Sunday to Savoonga, a small village on the northern tip of St. Lawrence Island, the U.S. Coast Guard set a search effort in motion that ended Monday when the teenager was pulled to safety by the crew of a fishing vessel.
The ordeal began Friday morning when the teenager, Derek Parker Aghnaanga, set sail with his older brother, Sidney Kulowiyi, 35, to catch halibut, according to their mother, Vina Kulowiyi. Ms. Kulowiyi declined to comment but referred to a public Facebook post in which she gave a brief account of their journey and rescue.
“He was never afraid the whole time,” she wrote.
The captain of the fishing vessel who rescued them said the brothers were with a cousin. The three were scheduled to return around 3 a.m. Sunday, according to the Coast Guard. When the skiff did not emerge, officials in the family’s village alerted the Alaska State Troopers, said Austin McDaniel, a deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Public Safety.
The authorities sent out search teams to canvass the land on Sunday afternoon. However, dense fog and darkness prevented the Coast Guard from sending rescuers out on the water on Sunday. Crews embarked on Monday morning, after conditions had improved.
A crew aboard a Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules aircraft scanned the vast sea for any sign of the teenager. Family members had provided the skiff’s last known location, said Petty Officer Third Class Nathan Bishop of the Coast Guard.
The crew found the lone survivor sitting atop the overturned skiff at about 10:30 a.m., the petty officer said.
Derek was about four miles from St. Lawrence Island, which sits about 164 miles off the coast of mainland Alaska. He had aimlessly drifted in the north Bering Sea, a vast ocean between Alaska and Russia near the North Pole.
The Coast Guard enlisted the crew of the F/V Northwest Explorer, a fishing boat that was collecting samples of fish species as part of a survey sponsored by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to assist with the rescue. Its captain, Adam White, said he was told his ship was closest to Derek, even though he was 39 miles away.
It took Mr. White’s crew four hours to reach Derek, following red flares dropped by the Coast Guard’s aircraft. His crew blasted a horn about once every mile, hoping the teenager would hear it and realize help was on the way, Mr. White said.
“It was the longest four hours of my life,” he said in an interview.
Finally, Mr. White and his crew arrived to see Derek, wearing a bright yellow jacket kneeling on the hull of his capsized skiff. The Coast Guard had dropped inflatable rafts, but Derek was too weak to swim to them, Mr. White said.
So the crew of the Northwest Explorer flung a rope to Derek and pulled him aboard. Members of the 13-member crew, which included seven scientists, wrapped warm towels around him, Mr. White said.
The teenager had moderate hypothermia, he said, and the scientists took his temperature periodically.
“I am not sure how anybody else would survive that,” he said.
Mr. White said his crew also recovered the bodies of Derek’s brother and cousin.
It was not clear how the skiff capsized.
Temperatures in the area were in the mid-40s and wind gusts reached about 15 miles an hour over the weekend, which Evan Kutta, a science and operations officer with the National Weather Service in Fairbanks, Alaska, said was normal for this time of year.
The Northwest Explorer docked in Nome, Alaska, on Tuesday morning after sailing for more than 100 miles from the site of the rescue. Mr. White watched as Derek was reunited with his family, locking hands with one of his brothers.
Writing on Facebook, Ms. Kulowiyi described her son as a “survivor,” adding that Derek didn’t eat or drink the entire time he was stranded.
“He lived on prayer,” she said.
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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