Castaways Rescued From Tiny Pacific Island After Spelling out ‘Help’ in Sand

After a week of being stranded, three castaways were saved from a small Pacific Ocean island by using palm fronds to spell out “HELP” in the sand.

The trio were rescued by a US Navy and Coast Guard operation.

The three men’s 20-foot skiff was damaged by swells and its motor broke when they were intending to go fishing in the seas surrounding Pikelot Atoll, which is a part of Micronesia.

After taking damage to their boat, they managed to scramble ashore on the tiny uninhabited Pikelot, but their radio ran out of battery before they could call for help.

The castaways then gathered up palm fronds and arranged them to spell out “HELP” on the beach, according to the US Coast Guard.

For the week they were stranded, the men lived off coconut meat and fresh water from a small well on the island.

Castaways on the remote Pacific Pikelot Island

Officials have said it is difficult to overstate how remote Pikelot is. The island is part of the Federated States of Micronesia, a Pacific nation between the Philippines and Hawaii that is made up of more than 600 islands scattered across about 2.5 million square kilometers of ocean.

The Coast Guard said a US Navy P-8A reconnaissance jet dispatched from Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Japan, spotted the palm-frond “HELP” sign on the beach on April 7.

After being dropped crucial supplies and communication equipment, the Coast Guard scrambled a rescue effort.

Upon arriving on the tiny island, one of the Coast Guard officers realized that he was third cousins with one of the men and fourth cousins with the other two.

One of the rescuers on the beach was Petty Officer 2nd Class Eugene Halishlius. The stranded men were surprised to see that Halishlius was Micronesian and spoke the local language.

“I could see on their faces, ‘Whoa! Who’s this guy pulling up that can speak our language?’” Halishlius told CNN in an interview.

When he gave his name to the first of the stranded men to reach the rescue boat, the castaway was stunned: they were related.

“It’s a crazy world, I actually found out I’m related to them!” Halishlius said. “He couldn’t believe I’m with the Coast Guard trying to rescue them.”

A similar case in 2020

In 2020 a similar case with castaways proves that if you ever find yourself stuck on an uninhabited island in the Pacific, it turns out that writing HELP or SOS in giant letters on the sand works.

Three mariners from the Micronesian island of Pulap, were reported missing after setting off for home from the Puluwat atoll, about 25 miles away, a day earlier. In a joint operation, aircraft dispatched by the American authorities in Guam and a ship sent by the Australian military combed the area in a search for the sailors.

One of the American aircraft was finishing the final leg of the day’s patrol when crew members saw the scrawled letters and a blue-and-white vessel on the sand of a tiny uninhabited atoll called Pikelot. The mariners were rescued.