Teen Survives Days on Overturned Boat After Brother and Cousin Die

A 15-year-old Alaska boy survived nearly three days clinging to an overturned fishing boat in the freezing Bering Sea after his older brother and cousin died during the same ordeal.

Derek Parker Aghnaanga was found Monday morning, Sept. 7, kneeling on top of an overturned 18-foot skiff about four miles east of St. Lawrence Island.

The U.S. Coast Guard spotted him from the air around 10:30 a.m. after an overnight search for the missing fishing party.

What rescuers found was extraordinary.

Aghnaanga had reportedly spent about 62 hours exposed to the elements with no food or drinking water as waves crashed around the capsized boat.

Watch the dramatic rescue footage from Alaska’s News Source

The teenager had left the village of Savoonga on Friday, Sept. 4, with his 35-year-old brother, Sidney Kulowiyi, and their 34-year-old cousin, Barton Rookok.

The three were heading out to fish for halibut and were expected back around 3 a.m. Sunday.

When they failed to return, Alaska State Troopers notified the Coast Guard at approximately 8:30 p.m. Sunday, according to Alaska’s News Source. (alaskasnewssource.com)

Dense fog complicated the early search.

By Monday morning, however, a Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules crew spotted Aghnaanga on the overturned vessel.

The aircraft dropped a life raft and survival supplies nearby and then directed the Northwest Explorer, a fishing vessel already in the area, toward him. (foxnews.com)

Captain Adam White and his crew soon spotted the strange shape on the horizon.

They sounded the ship’s horn and moved toward the skiff.

Video from the rescue shows Aghnaanga wearing a bright yellow jacket and kneeling on the overturned hull while the Northwest Explorer approaches.

Crew members threw him a line, pulled the skiff toward the larger vessel and eventually lifted the exhausted teenager aboard in a rescue basket.

The water around him was approximately 50 degrees Fahrenheit, or 10 degrees Celsius. (apnews.com)

Aghnaanga was showing signs of hypothermia.

The crew wrapped him in blankets, placed hot packs around him and kept him talking while trying to warm him.

Even through chattering teeth, the teenager quickly told rescuers what had happened to the two relatives who had been with him.

His brother Sidney was still trapped beneath the overturned skiff, Aghnaanga told White.

His cousin Barton had managed to survive on the overturned boat with him for some time but slipped away during the night before the rescue.

“That’s one tough kid,” White told Alaska’s News Source. (alaskasnewssource.com)

The bodies of Kulowiyi and Rookok were later recovered.

Aghnaanga’s family has since shared even more heartbreaking details about what he endured.

Relatives said the teenager tried to hold onto his brother and cousin after they died but ultimately could not keep them with him as the sea continued battering the overturned boat. (foxnews.com)

His mother, Vina Kulowiyi, later described her son as a survivor and said prayer helped sustain him.

She said Derek had gone for days without food or water and spent much of his time kneeling and praying on the boat.

Family members also said Derek was comforted by knowing that his older brother remained underneath the skiff.

The tragedy devastated their small home community of Savoonga, a predominantly Siberian Yupik village on St. Lawrence Island with roughly 800 residents.

Fishing there is far more than a recreational activity.

Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game says subsistence fishing remains an important source of food and community support throughout rural Alaska, where harvested fish and wildlife are commonly shared with relatives, elders and neighbors. (adfg.alaska.gov)

Halibut in particular has been harvested for centuries by Indigenous coastal communities in Alaska.

The state says Savoonga is one of the rural communities whose residents are eligible to participate in the federally managed subsistence halibut fishery. (adfg.alaska.gov)

Aghnaanga’s aunt, Collen Walker, told the Associated Press that Sidney was known as a provider in the village and frequently shared what he caught with other families.

Derek often went fishing with his older brother and reportedly viewed him as a father figure after their own father died when the boys were younger. (apnews.com)

The cause of the accident has not been officially established.

Family members have said they believe fishing line may have become tangled around the boat’s motor before the vessel overturned, but authorities have not publicly confirmed a final cause.

That distinction matters because some later reports have presented the fishing-line theory as established fact.

What is confirmed is that the three men left Savoonga on Sept. 4, failed to return as planned early Sunday, and that Derek was found alive Monday morning.

By then, he had endured multiple nights alone on an overturned boat in one of the harshest marine environments in the United States.

White said the emotional weight of the rescue became even clearer when the Northwest Explorer later reunited Derek with his family.

The captain recalled seeing both gratitude and grief in their faces — relief that one member of the family had survived and devastation that two others had not.

Aghnaanga has since returned home and is recovering.

His family continues to mourn Sidney Kulowiyi and Barton Rookok, while calling Derek’s survival remarkable.

For the crew that found him kneeling on the overturned skiff after days in the Bering Sea, there was little disagreement.

They had just witnessed an extraordinary survival story.