This fella survived 13 months in a broken boat and just wants to get back to work

'I'm desperate and exhausted': Mexican shark fisherman who spent 13 MONTHS adrift in the Pacific gives first account of his ordeal and how he survived by drinking TURTLE BLOOD

Across a crackling radio transmission, the 'Miracle Man of the Pacific Ocean' told for the first time today how his incredible 16 months adrift in a small boat had left him 'desperate and exhausted.'

Speaking briefly to MailOnline through an interpreter as he was carried by boat from a tiny atoll to the main port in the isolated Marshall Islands, Jose Ivan told of his anxiety to be reunited with his family.

'I just want to get back home to Mexico, but I don't even know where I am,' he said, his voice filled with emotion.

During what he said was more than a year drifting helplessly through the treacherous waters of the Pacific after his small boat broke down when he and a fisherman colleague had set out from the Mexican coast, Jose said he was 'tired and sad.'

Ivan's companion had died at sea several months ago, he added.

Despite earlier reports that he had left his port in September 2012 to sail to El Salvador, he said over the crackly radio transmission from ship-to-ship today that he had in fact set out to sea December 25 of that year, more than 13 months ago.

'We set off to go shark fishing,' he told a Mexican interpreter on a yacht moored in Majuro, capital of the Marshall Island.

It is understood his small boat encountered engine trouble and the currents carried them out into the ocean.
Despite their attempts to attract other vessels, they continued to drift further out to sea - and it was then, as the weeks and the months dragged by, that their desperate struggle to survive took up every minute.

Jose was taken by small boat to another part of the atoll group where a young Norweigian anthropology student, Ola Fjeldstad, managed to have a broken conversation with him and learn something of his amazing story of survival.
        
It was then that the local mayor, Ione deBrum, used the atoll group's only phone to put a call through to the Marshall Islands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and his existence became known.          
His words over the radio today made it clear, however, that his immediate plan, once his health had returned, was to return home to his family in Mexico.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2550384/EXCLUSIVE-Mexican-Miracle-Man-Ocean-gives-account-survived-16-months-adrift-washing-8-000-miles-away.html#ixzz2sC0Tf0qp