A man who was drifting at sea for 15 weeks claims that he's alive because a shark saved him.
Toakai Teitoi, a 41-year-old police officer, says that he is alive today after a shark helped save his life and led him to rescue.
Teitoi and his brother-in-law, Ielu Falaile, 52, were on a 15-foot wooden boat as they were on their way home to the island of Maiana from the Kiribati capital of Tarwana after Tetoi was sworn in as a police officer.
The trip should have taken two hours, but the men decided to fish along the way. They fell asleep and drifted far away from Maiana and could no longer see land. Shortly after, they ran out of fuel.
The men were stranded.
"We had plenty of food and we could catch fish, but the problem was there was nothing to drink,' Teitoi told the Daily Mail.
After five weeks at sea, Teito's brother-in-law died due to dehydration.
"I left him there overnight and slept next to him, like at a funeral," said Teitoi. He lowered his brother-in-law's body into the water the next morning.
A tropical storm hit the seas 24 hours later, providing Teito with the water that he needed. He filled two give gallon containers with the rain that fell for several days.
However his supplies were still limited. Teitoi lived off the water he collected and fish he caught, but he resorted to prayer in the hopes that he would be rescued. A boat had passed by but the crew didn't notice him.
Teitoi was beginning to lose hope after spending 15 weeks at sea and losing his brother-in-law, but a bit of a miracle happened.
"Just as I was giving up all hope of being rescued after one boat had passed me by in the distance something every strange happened," Teitoi told the Daily Mail.
"I was cowering from the sun under a piece of cloth I had stretched across the front of the boat when I felt a big bump, followed by some scratching," he said. "I looked over the side and saw a six-foot shark circling my boat, but it was mainly bumping against the hull."
"It definitely caught my attention because I had been fast asleep. Then, because I was now awake, I looked around me and saw the stern of a ship," Teitoi continued."I couldn't believe my eyes. I could just make out the crew who were looking at me through binoculars."
Being awake, Teitoi was able to wave at the crew which came to his rescue and took him to the Marshall Islands. Teitoi is thankful that the shark, who may have just been looking for its next meal, woke him up when the rescue boat was nearby.
"If that shark hadn't nudged me awake the crew of the boat might have thought I wasn't in trouble and might have carried on sailing past me," Teitoi told the Daily Mail.
After surviving the ordeal, Teitoi swears he'll never take a trip by boat again.
He flew back to his home in Maiana.
