A man lost at sea for more than a year survived, he says, on only what he caught from a small fishing boat. It seems improbable, but doctors say it's possible.

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

The father of Pacific castaway Jose Salvador Alvarenga said he was told his long-lost son vanished on a fishing trip but he didnt have the heart to break the news to his ailing wife.

Courtesy of Telemundo

Ezequiel Cordoba saw Jose Salvador Alvarenga on Dec. 18, 2012, when he left to go fishing with Jose Salvador Alvarenga.

Now both parents are celebrating after learning that the son they last saw almost a decade ago is alive after washing up on the Marshall Islands with a long beard and an astonishing story of more than a year lost at sea.

They told me that he had entered the sea and that hed never come out, Ricardo Orellana told NBC partner Telemundo from the family home in El Salvador.

But because she was ill, I told her nothing, he said of his wife, Julia Alvarenga, who wept tears of gratitude.

Although she had no idea that Alvarenga had left Mexico on a 24-foot boat and never returned, because he had been out of touch for so long, she worried misfortune had befallen him.

I pleaded to my all powerful God that if my son was still alive, that he would take care of him. If he was dead, that he would forgive him, she said.

Continued here:

Mexican fisherman shore up Marshall Islands castaway's account