He has since been reunited with his family.
An Indonesian teen who was lost at sea for 49 days "prayed every day" to get through the ordeal.
Aldi Novel Adilang, 19, was working as lamp keeper for a rompong, or a floating fish trap, off the shore of Sulawesi when the line tethering him broke during a storm and he became lost at sea.
"I thought, 'I will never meet my parents again,'" Adilang said.
The teen said he ran out of food within a week and survived by eating fish and drinking seawater that he filtered through his clothes.
He also told The Associated Press that he turned on his lamp every time he sighted another ship and could not remember how many passed by.
He was eventually able to use his walkie-talkie to flag down a Panamanian vessel off the coast of Guam, 1,200 miles from his original location.
The crew fed him and gave him a haircut. He returned home two days later.
Adilang, who is the youngest son of four siblings, said he no longer wants to work on a rompong.
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