A group of refugees lost at sea for 15 days survived by eating dead passengers.
Just four of the 33 Dominican migrants survived the ocean ordeal after attempting to reach Puerto Rico by boat on October 17.
After being told not to bring any food or water onto the single-day journey, their captain reportedly abandoned ship two days later after becoming lost and running out of fuel.
Survivor Gregorio Maria Marizan told reporters from his hospital bed that the deserted group unsuccessfully tried to sustain themselves on rain and seawater and began to die one by one.
They would then wait 15 to 20 minutes before throwing each dead body overboard.
Desperate, the refugees then made the heartbreaking decision to resort to cannibalism.
"Imagine, 15 days without food, without water. I'm a sailor, a fisherman - they were all yelling at me to do something," the Daily Mail reported Mr Marizan as saying.
"We had to eat him, to save our own lives. We cut from his leg and chest. We cut little pieces and swallowed them like pills.
"It's like beef, almost the same."
While four men and one woman were rescued by US Coast Guard helicopter near the Turks and Caicos Islands on Saturday, the woman died shortly after in hospital on the island of Providenciales.
Mr Marizan's brother Saulio was among the survivors, but other sibling Emmanuel died at sea.
Dominican Minister of Tourism Francisco Javier Garcia said the migrants ate from the corpse of the last person to die.
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