A Man Who Claims He Was Lost At Sea For 13 Months Is Now Back In Civilization

Jose Salvador Alvarenga says he has been lost at sea for 13 months.  

Jose Salvador Alvarenga is now safely back on land among civilization and now authorities are checking his story for holes, many questions remain about how he could have lived on his small boat for so long as it drifted across the Pacific Ocean.

Alvarenga was found in his heavily damaged boat on a remote coral atoll in the Marshall Islands, he said he had been eating fish and turtles and drinking rainwater, and sometimes his own urine.

The Mexican government issued a statement Monday confirming Alvarenga's identity, and said he is originally from  El Salvador

CNN talked to some of his  family members there,  which said they hadn't heard from him in ages and thought he might be dead.

The 37 year old Alvarenga told officials that he set out on the fishing trip with the teenage son of a co-worker back in December of 2012.  But the boy could not stomach the bizarre diet of raw birds and turtles and fish, and he died of hunger and thirst four weeks after a storm pushed their 24-foot fishing boat off course. He said he threw the body overboard.

The battered vessel finally washed up on a reef on Ebon Atoll last Thursday to the shock of islanders who found Alvarenga in ragged underwear, sporting a bushy beard and long hair and telling an incredible story.

Two days later he was taken by boat to the main island, Majuro, where he gave officials information about his background, including the names of relatives scattered from his hometown in El Salvador to the suburbs of the United States.

The fisherman has been fingerprinted and authorities in Mexico are trying to track down the details of his life there.