Disbelief at castaway’s 13-month survival story

It’s a story that almost defies belief: A man leaves Mexico in December 2012 for a day of shark fishing and ends up surviving 13 months on fish, birds, and turtles before washing ashore on the remote Marshall Islands 8,800km away.

But that’s the story a man identifying himself as 37-year-old Jose Salvador Alvarenga told the US ambassador in the Marshall Islands and the nation’s officials during a meeting yesterday before he was taken to a local hospital for monitoring.

Alvarenga washed ashore on the tiny atoll of Ebon in the Pacific Ocean last week before being taken to the capital, Majuro.