Two Myanmar men who say they spent 25 days lost at sea in a giant icebox were granted humanitarian visas to stay in Australia, officials said Saturday.

The men, aged 23 and 24 were spotted by an aerial border patrol floating in shark-infested waters off Australia’s far north in January.

They said they jumped into the commercial-sized cooler as their Thai fishing boat sank just before Christmas, and survived for almost a month at sea by drinking rainwater and eating fish regurgitated by passing seabirds.

The men told Australian authorities the accident claimed their 18 Thai and Myanmar crewmates.

Immigration officials said the men were among five aslyum-seekers granted humanitarian visas Friday to stay in Australia, and would be resettled in the country’s central south or west.

“Five people were granted permanent protection visas from yesterday on Christmas Island (detention centre),” a department spokesman said.

“Two of those men are from Burma (Myanmar) and arrived in the Torres Strait in January.”

The pair were within days expected to leave Christmas Island, some 2,600 kilometres (1,612 miles) to the country’s northwest, he said.

They were from Henzada, in Myanmar’s south-west, and reportedly feared they would be killed if forced to return, The Australian newspaper said.

Survival experts questioned the veracity of the men’s extraordinary story, saying only a regular supply of clean, fresh water would have kept them alive — an unlikely prospect in the open sea.

Others wondered at their remarkably good health given their claimed exposure to the elements for almost a month.

There was no indication the men were part of a group of hundreds of migrants from Myanmar’s Muslim minority Rohingya, reportedly set adrift in Thailand recently, some of whom have been rescued around India and Indonesia.

15:05 AEST Sat May 9 2009
AFP