About 1,000 curious onlookers crowded the dock for a glimpse of the long-haired fisherman, who smiled and waved briefly before he was whisked away for a medical check-up at Majuro Hospital. Photo: AFP

A man who says he survived more than a year adrift in the Pacific drinking turtle blood and catching fish with his bare hands has been transported to the Marshall Islands capital Majuro for treatment.

A male nurse had to help the man down the gangplank of a police patrol boat after a 22-hour trip from the remote coral atoll where he washed shore last week after apparently setting sail from Mexico in late 2012.

About 1,000 curious onlookers crowded the dock for a glimpse of the long-haired fisherman, who smiled and waved briefly before he was whisked away for a medical check-up at Majuro Hospital.

An emaciated man whose boat washed up on a remote Pacific atoll this week claims he survived 16 months adrift on the Pacific. Photo: AFP.

He was found disorientated and clad only in ragged underpants last Thursday, after his 7.3-metre fibreglass boat floated onto a reef at Ebon Atoll, the southernmost cluster of coral islands in the Marshalls.

Marshall Islands Foreign Affairs acting secretary Gee Bing said the the man, who identified himself as Jose Salvador Albarengo, 37, told interpreters he set sail from Mexico to El Salvador on a shark fishing expedition in late 2012.

Mr Bing said Mr Albarengo says he was accompanied by a Mexican man who died at sea.

"Well according to him he said he was on a fishing trip with another guy and somehow the north wind blew them and they got lost," Mr Bing told Pacific Beat

Map locating the Marshall Islands, in the northern Pacific Ocean, which are home to barely 60,000 people spread over 24 atolls. Photo: AFP.

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Man washes up on remote Marshall Islands atoll after more than a year adrift in Pacific