2 from sunken boat drift 25 days in cooler

CANBERRA, Australia — Two desperate, dehydrated men found bobbing in a bathtub-sized cooler off Australia told authorities they spent 25 days adrift after their fishing boat sank, officials said Tuesday. There was no sign of 18 other crew members.

Authorities were amazed that the men, from the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, were spotted by a routine customs-service flight that patrols for far larger craft such as illegal trawlers in Australia's northern waters.

A photograph taken from the patrol plane shows the men standing shirtless in the pink cooler — a waist-high container often used to store freshly caught fish — and waving frantically.

The men, 22 and 24, were rescued by helicopter Saturday, Maritime Safety Authority spokeswoman Tracey Jiggins said. They were treated for dehydration and released Tuesday.

The Sydney Morning Herald's Wednesday edition said the younger man, Ko Ko Oo, reported that he and his companion, Haung Htaik, survived on only monsoon rainwater for the first 10 days.

"Then two big seabirds came and vomited some small fish — about six or seven little fish, and that's all," Oo told the newspaper.

The men told police they had been aboard a 30-foot wooden fishing boat that sank Dec. 23 with a total crew of 20 from Thailand and Myanmar.

Officials did not know why the boat sank, Jiggins said, but the two men said the vessel had been taking on water for some time before it went down.

Graeme Reberger, director of the Australian cooler manufacturer Techni Ice, said the men appeared to have been in one of his company's 210-gallon models manufactured in Thailand.

"I'm just surprised that they were able to stay in it without it tipping over," Reberger told Nine Network television news.