Why didn’t Gilligan think of this? Three men whose fishing boat lost power on March 31st were just rescued more than a week later from an uninhabited, 31-acre island in the Pacific after rescuers spotted the word “HELP” spelled out in palm fronds on the beach, CNN reports. The men lived off coconut meat and fresh water from a well built by fishermen in the area who sometimes stopped on the islet.
The island where the fisherman were found, Piklelot, an island on the outer reaches of Micronesia after a search that covered more than 100,000 square miles. “This act of ingenuity was pivotal in guiding rescue efforts directly to their location,” the coordinator of the US Coast Guard effort to find the men commented.