15-year-old Alaska resident Derek Parker Agnaanga survived the sinking of a small fishing boat in which his brothers died. The teenager was adrift in the icy waters on a capsized boat for up to three days before he was discovered by the U.S. Coast Guard near St. Lawrence Island, which is located less than 100 km (less than 50 miles) off the Russian coast, local station KTUU reported.
The teenager went to sea with his relatives last Friday and were expected home on Sunday. After they failed to return to the port of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island, the family contacted Alaska law enforcement.
The US Coast Guard used aircraft to locate the surviving boy on Monday and asked the crew of the fishing research vessel Northwest Explorer to retrieve him. One of Agnaanga's brothers did not live to be rescued for less than a day.
“Through chattering teeth, he said that his brother was under an overturned boat, and then said that the night before the rescue, his cousin rolled off the ship into the water,” the captain of the ship Andrew White reported the teenager’s words.
The captain of a research and fishing vessel off Alaska's western coast recounts the rescue of a 15-year-old boy who was stranded on the top of his overturned vessel, having waited for days after an incident that left his brother and cousin dead. 👉 https://t.co/XNvVVy8NNy pic.twitter.com/RUfHiIuLvP
— Alaska's News Source (@AKNewsNow) September 10, 2026
White added that he and his colleagues tried to distract the rescued man by talking while they were taking him to his family in the city of Nome on mainland Alaska, but they could not avoid emotions. He called the boy, who spent three days without water or food in the icy Bering Sea, a “tough guy.”
“When you look into the eyes of your relatives, you see gratitude, but also sadness at the same time. This shocked me, and I had to go hide in my cabin for a while,” the captain noted.
As the Associated Press (AP) notes, the bodies of the teenager's relatives were found in the same area near the island after Agnaanga was found safe. The identities of the victims were confirmed Thursday by the Alaska Highway Patrol as 35-year-old Sidney Kulowi and 34-year-old Barton Rookok.
