The group are residents of Bougainville County, Papua New Guinea. They said they survived by eating coconuts floating on the sea and using a bowl to collect rainwater to drink during 32 days of drifting at sea.
The Solomon Star newspaper said the group departed from Bougainville on December 22 and planned to celebrate Christmas in the Carteret Islands, about 100km away.
However, one of the surviving victims - Dominic Stally said that their small boat capsized and a few people in the group drowned.
The remaining people tried to turn their boats around, but many others died while the boats drifted on the wild water and had strong currents.
"We couldn't do anything with their bodies, we just dropped them into the sea. A couple who died left behind their young child. I took care of the child but he eventually passed away" - he said.
Stally said that some fishing boats had passed nearby but had not recognized them. These people were rescued on January 23 off the coast of New Caledonia after drifting about 2,000km.
The Star News reported that the survivors include 2 men, 1 woman and a girl about 12 years old. After a month of wandering in the Pacific, the four survivors are gradually recovering in the Solomon Islands.
This is not the first time a story about the intense vitality of humans drifting at sea has occurred in the Pacific Ocean.
In January 2014, Salvador fisherman Jose Alvarenga drifted to Marshall after more than 13 months since departing for the west coast of Mexico with a friend. This person died on the way.
Jose Alvarenga survived by eating raw fish and bird meat, drinking rainwater, turtle blood and even his own urine.
An Indonesian teenager survived a seven-week trip at sea in 2018 after a fishing trap broke from its anchor and was found 2,500km away, off the coast of Guam.
