Last night, I had the privilege of hearing Ed Harrell speak to a community class at our church. Mr. Harrell is one of the 300 or so survivors of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in August 1945. He spent several days in the water, surviving shark attacks, kapok life vests that became waterlogged & simply sank, 100 degree temperatures & scorching sun, delirium (in others), and no food or water (until he found some half-rotten potatoes), before being rescued by a Consolidated PBY. Eighty-plus men were in the water in his group; after 4 days, there were 17 left when he & a buddy struck out with 5 others clinging to a makeshift raft, on which they wrung out & dried extra life vests.

I’ve said all that to get to this: In his speech, he mentioned that several of the initial survivors drank sea water—some even tried to filter out the salt by straining it through cloth (which obviously didn’t work). He indicated that drinking seawater made the men crazy—using his hands to indicate they were off their rocker—and they succumbed quickly after that.

Doug, Chris, & those many others of you with far more knowledge & experience than me: What happened? And why? What effect does seawater have on the body?

(I know not to do it, but would like to understand more.)

David

Firstly, there have been a few advocates ( aka idiots) who claim you can. A french physician conducted experimental liferaft journey in the 1950s and supposedly survived by drinking saltwater. The Kon-Tiki expedition also claimed drinking small amounts was possible. I've only had one occasion to openly challenge this dangerous falsehood. A BOATING SAFETY INSTRUCTOR claimed it could be done. I grabbed a glass, filled it with fresh seawater and handed it to him. The immediate result made his audio visual training aids pale. I'm rusty on my lecture, but simply put the human body is almost a duplicate of the ocean. Dry us out like a mummy or those characters in DUNE and you have seawater. But, a massive salinity increase disrupts the natural cellular osmosis. Try putting guppies into a salt water aquarium and see how they react- if Bill Van doesn't rescue them first <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />. Our M.D.s and medical personell will probably explain this better. Basically, having recovered people who did, you go into delirium as your brain and then quickly major organs shut down . I also had the priveledge of meeting a U.S.S. Indianapolis survivor. He still had the lifevest and would quietly put it on whenever stressed. He also had a LARGE canteen with him constantly. This was in pre bottled water days. Nobody thought less of him who knew his background.

Chris described the condition quite well, in reference to cellular osmosis.

Think of it this way; you have a membrane (cell membrane) that is semi-permeable, certain things i.e. ions, proteins glucose, etc. can or cannot move across the membrane, depending upon size and charge.


See:
http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/cmb/cells/pmemb/osmosis.html

http://www.purchon.com/biology/osmosis.htm

When you have a solution where there is a higher concentration of salt (hypertonic) then is normal for the human body (isotonic), water will move across the membrane to try and equalize the concentration to make it isotonic.

When you drink sea water the body will try and equalize the hypertonic (too much salt) in the intestine, drawing important fluids from the intravascular system (within the blood vessels), the interstisal spaces (the fluid filled spaces between cells – the cells are bathed in fluid) and then intracellular (from within the cells themselves). This depletion of fluid will cause cells, transport systems, hormonal and thermal regulation to malfunction. This will result in varying signs and symptoms depending upon the amount of seawater consumed, the age, weight and overall health of the individual.

Some animals have biological pumps that can allow them to drink seawater and concentrate the “salts” to be excreted.

There is some connection to the condition (sort of the drinking sea-water, but in reverse) of consuming large quantities of water when one is engaged in activities resulting in profuse sweating.

Pete

Chris and Pete, thank you for the explanation, best I've seen on the subject. I never really knew if drinking the salt water accelerated the process or if the sun,wind and dehydration
did it alone.
Dave

Alain BOMBARD is the name of that guy : "le naufrag? volontaire" ; he tried to prove that after a sea disater, you can survive in a raft, if you have at least some food and water : he extended the possibilities of survival by drinking rain, fish "juice" and sea water diluted with fresh water, eating fish and plancton...
He arrived in a very bad shape at the end of his "journey", but survive he did !
And - partly - because of his experiment, life rafts are now mandatory abord ships.

I would have to make some research but I don't think he claimed you can simply drink sea water, without consequences...
IIRC at that time, the chances to survive a high sea disaster were supposed to be extremely small. Thus rafts were not useful.
He just wanted to show survival is possible with a minimum of food - and especially water - to start with, items you can improve/make last a long time ...
it won't be holidays, but survival is possible even after a long time lost at sea.

thus the
bombard life rafts

here is another "r?sum?", in real english <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

My father enlisted in the Navy prior to WWII. During those years, three of the ships he was on sunk. On two occasions he was declared “Lost at Sea.” The last time he did not return home until February 1946. Neither he nor the Navy knew who he was until he regained his senses. He had been shot in the face and had swallowed a lot of salt water by the time he was accidently found four days later in the South Pacific without most of his cloths or his I.D. I was old enough to walk to him the first we met. Years later, I remember seeing his name, also my name since I was named after him, up on a WWII War Memorial in a park in his mothers home town. My mother still has the telegrams from the Department of the Navy. It wasn’t until I was an adult that my uncle who was also in the Pacific told me the history. My uncle also told me of the knife my dad made and carried after the first ship went down and his encounter with sharks. He said that my dad never again went on deck without a pistol belt, canteen, and that nasty knife. I had seen that knife but it was always kept in a locked trunk. When I then went to my father, he finally told me his story.

He confirmed the facts that kapok vest were only good for about three days. He also knew not to drink salt water but when your head is barely above the surface especially with a water logged kapok vest in rough seas, you can’t help but swallow some.

If you do any cooking, preserving, or smoking meat or fish, you know that salt draws out water. Without water, bacteria cannot grow. It is the same with most living beings. With too high of a salt content, the electrolytes in the body are upset and the electrical current that we all depend on is disrupted.

Frenchy:

Mr. Bombard is the type of person the world should admire, not the latest "Oprah" fad.

Bountyhunter

I would also suspect that if you drank seawater (even a little) without fresh water available, like pretzels & chips, it would make you thirstier than you would be normally. Then you would probably drink a little more seawater because the first drink made you thirsty. And then a little more, and a little more. And then you die and you don't have to worry about it anymore. <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Sue

Alain, I hope I didn't sound bombastic about Bombard. His effort was a very big step, or paddle forward in marine survival. I am sure a good percentile of our contemporary knowledge and gear will come under future criticism. Pete, thanks for hydrating my dessicated answer. My lecture was a long,long time ago and the class was taught by a CPO less than articulate. He finally just bellowed " Drink seawater and you will be court-martialled" easilly remembered after cellular osmosis was long forgotten <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Can dead people be court-martialled? Or is that like parents who say if their son survives whatever he's done, they're gonna kill him?

Sue

No problemo ... I just wanted to point to the fact his efforts were aimed at demonstrating lives could be saved with a life raft and a few goodies... and a strong mind !

And yes, he was seen as some kind iof a weirddo (sp?) at this time ...
and he still may be one ..; but he did something usefull, IMO.

IIRC, one lesson Bombard learned from his ordeal, was that the physical aspects of survival were far less important than the psychological ones. Or, at least, were easier to deal with ...
Even more than water, you need a very strong mind in such circumstances ...

Here's a semi-topical contribution...

One of the more amazing species of fish are the desert pupfish. They have amazing tolerances for tempurature and salinity. Here's a brief bit one one of the species, the Desert Pupfish, from Extreme Evolution, Desert-dwelling fish live on the edge of survival. from the California Academy Sciences website:

"Of the five species native to California, the biggest record holder is the desert pupfish, . The largest pupfish, this two-inch-long leviathan can live in waters from a frigid 40° F up to a scalding 112° F. It can endure the lowest levels of oxygen of any fish species, and a range of salinity from no-salt to twice the salt concentration of seawater."

What the article doesn't explain well is that the habitat will go through these extremes one or more times in a singe season. So the fish have adapted to being able to live in water that conditions that change from fresh water to saline. (another species can withstand 3x concentration of sea water!). Tough little buggers!

On a sad note, of the 13 sepecies, several are exinct or exist only in captivity. I know of a hobbyist breader who has a federal permit to bread them with the hopes of reintroducing them into the wild, although that may be a very remote possibility. Habitat destruction becasue of a falling water table is the main culprit followed by the introduction of alien species, such as game fish. Who knows what scientific discoveries will be lost forever if these unique fish disappear.