AN Indonesian teenager has been rescued after drifting at sea for 49 days, the Indonesian foreign ministry said Monday.

Aldi Adilang, 18, was working as a lamp keeper in a fishing hut 125 kilometers off the northern coast of Manado in the province of North Sulawesi, Indonesia. The structure of the hut came loose from the seabed because of a storm in July, the ministry said in a statement.

Adilang survived by eating fish which he cooked using burning wood in his hut. He drank seawater he filtered through his clothes.

He was rescued Aug. 13 in waters off the U.S. territory of Guam by the Panamanian-flagged vessel, MV Arpeggio.

“The Indonesian consulate in Osaka picked up Adilang on September in Tokuyama, Japan, after the ship moored and made sure that he was in good health,” the statement said.

Adilang returned to his hometown of Manado on Sulawesi Island and was reunited with his family September 8.

Rompongs, which look like small huts, are fish aggregator devices that sit upon buoys or floats and are anchored to concrete blocks on the seafloor by rope.

Adilang’s job was to light lamps powered by a generator on the trap each night to attract fish. He was hired to spend six months on rompongs, with someone visiting at the end of each week to drop off food, water and fuel and pick up the fish.

But in mid-July, strong winds and water currents broke the rope tethering the trap to its mooring, causing him to drift out into the open sea.

The platform made it all the way to the waters of Guam where he was picked up by a Panamanian-flagged ship, MV Arpeggio, on Aug. 31, before it continued onto Tokuyama port in the Yamaguchi prefecture of Japan.

“Aldi said he had been scared and often cried while adrift,” said Fajar Firdaus, a diplomat at the Indonesian consulate in Osaka, according to the Jakarta Post report.

“Every time he saw a large ship, he said, he was hopeful, but more than 10 ships sailed past him and none of them stopped or saw Aldi.”

After arriving on September 6, Adilang was examined by the Japanese Coast Guard and declared healthy enough to return to his home country, the Indonesian foreign affairs ministry said.

Two days later, the Indonesian Consulate in Osaka facilitated his return flight home. Consul General Mirza Nurhidayat told CNN that Adilang had recovered well since being plucked from the ocean in August. (SD-Agencies)