Dear Cecil, about 20 years ago I attended a ‘survival at sea’ course at the Israeli Navy. Quite predictably the instructor told us that no matter how thirsty you get, never, EVER drink seawater, since this will only accelerate dehydration. A few years later I watched a program on TV, in which some crazy “scientist” claimed that this was total rubbish. He claimed that the problem was with drinking sea water once dehydration has started, and that in fact drinking sea water immediately upon wreckage will decrease dehydration. Like all great scientists, he set out to test this theory on himself. He got into a life boat and immediately gulped some sea water. There was footage of him at sea in blistering sun, drinking seawater and sailing into the horizon (can’t remember for how long). He apparently survived to tell the story.
Anyone knows if this is true?
It couldn’t have been for long, that is, not on the order of days. Sure, you can drink small amounts of salt water without dying. But for poor schmos that aren’t going to see land for days, this is a ticket to death.
The sea water has less water content than your blood. Through osmosis, the water in your blood will go into your intestines, instead of the opposite: water being absorbed into your bloodstream. And with the lowered water level in your blood, your body’s thirst will elevate, you’ll be compelled to drink more sea water. This is a vicious circle that will dehydrate you to death.
The answer is yes, you can drink it, but it must be before dehydration begins, and it must be in small quantities. However, this answer does come with a bit of an asterisk…
The gentleman in question is one Alain Bombard. He sailed in a rubber raft named “L’Heritique” from Casablanca, Morocco to Barbados. The trip took him 65 days, and he arrived a little weaker, and a little thinner for the journey. HOWEVER (here’s that asterisk), he did NOT drink water as often as he wanted, every day. Of the 65 days at sea, he only drank sea water for 14 of those days. Also, IIRC, he didn’t drink salt water for more than 6 days consecutively. During this time at sea, he caught fish (and thus had the “liquid” and meat from them), and he also had rain water. The sea water was a supplement, not a staple.
All this being said, if you were to ONLY drink water with a salt content of sea water (10,000 ppm to 35,000 ppm, ppm = parts per million), eventually, yes you would die.
Hope this helps you…
-Dani
The question is would he had survived without drinking the small amounts of sea-water he did ingest?
Not for sure on that, i would imagine it would depend. Mostly on, how soon it rained, and how soon caught some fish. If he went several days without anything at all, then no he probably would not have survived IMHO…
Nitpick alert!
The line, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (sic) is:
“Water, water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink,
Water, water everywghere, nor any drop to drink.”
Probably one of the most misquoted lines of poetry ever, although I can understand why.