Scientific American Coping Strategies of Ocean Castaways Hold Lessons for the COVID Pandemic Shipwreck victims cast adrift for weeks or months exhibit a resilience that serves as a model to weather any extended crisis Print Salvadoran castaway José Salvador Alvarenga walks out of a hospital on the Marshall Islands with the help of a nurse after floating on the ocean for 438 days on a trip that was initially supposed to take him from Mexico to El Salvador. Credit: Hilary Hosia Advertisement On April 14, 2002, while routinely patrolling the Indian Ocean, a French Navy vessel spotted a dinghy with two passengers onboard. They had been drifting for 20 days. After being shipwrecked, they had escaped in a seven-meter-long lifeboat. They survived exposure, the blazing sun and a failed motor by drinking rainwater and eating bream that they fished from the sea with harpoons. After drifting 750 kilometers, the passengers’ survival seemed miraculous.