Message In a Bottle Turns Into Lifesaver
By Brian Harris

Forty-six Ecuadoreans and 40 Peruvians were rescued over the weekend, thanks in part to a message pleading for help cast into the Pacific Ocean in a bottle. Costa Rican authorities and a nonprofit environmental organization cooperated in the rescue near the island of Coco.

A passing fishing boat had noticed the migrants' drifting boat and alerted Costa Rican officials, but the coast guard's vessel was not available. A couple of hours later on Sunday morning, the captain of the long-line Costa Rican fishing boat Rey de Reyes noticed a bottle tied to its fishing lines.

In their desperation, the migrants had tied a soda bottle to one of the long liner's floats with a note inside reading ''Help, please help us,'' the nonprofit organization MarViva reported.

Later that evening, MarViva's boat found the passengers adrift, some 33 miles from Coco. It is an uninhabited island, which is a United Nations World Heritage site and famed for its scientific use in confirming many of Charles Darwin's theories on evolution and species adaptation.

According to the nonprofit organization's spokeswoman Michelle Soto, the migrants reported their boat sailed from the Ecuadorean port of Puerto Montañita early last week, with passengers hoping to make it in to the United States illegally. But when the boat developed mechanical troubles, the crew apparently changed over to another ship, abandoning their human cargo.

Communications with the island are difficult, and no one there could be reached for confirmation.

The Costa Rican Environment Ministry, which administers the island, said the 86 passengers are being kept on the island and the Costa Rican Public Security Ministry has dispatched its coast guard ship to the island with a doctor, immigration officials and emergency food supplies to the island. The ship is due there this morning.

The refugees' boat, which carried no identifying marks and flew no flag, was apparently close to sinking when the MarViva boat arrived.

''A little bit longer and all would have died,'' Environment Ministry spokeswoman Patricia Alpizar said.

The Costa Rican government says it has contacted the governments of Ecuador and Peru in the hopes they will send a boat to the island to pick up their nationals. The island is closer to the Ecuadorean Galapagos Island chain than it is to mainland Costa Rica. There are no boats near the island with a capacity to take the migrants to Costa Rica.

Founded by a Swiss donor in 2002, MarViva has patrolled the waters around the island since July 2003 on behalf of the Costa Rican government with three boats in an attempt to halt poaching there. It also patrols the waters around Panama's Coiba Island. While both countries have pledged to preserve both islands, neither has the funds or ships to do so.