Ahh, the ocean. The sun, the sand, and of course, the surf. There really is nothing more relaxing than
floating in the ocean. It’s so relaxing, in fact, that it’s tempting
to want to stay floating there forever. But is that possible? What would happen to your body if you lived
in the ocean? First of all, it’s unlikely you’d survive
even a few hours before hypothermia kicked in. Very few parts of the ocean maintain surface
temperatures in excess of eighty degrees fahrenheit - anything less and you’re at risk for hypothermia. Hypothermia happens when your core body temperature
drops below ninety-five degrees fahrenheit, and cold water accelerates heat loss by up
to twenty-five percent. Within a few minutes you’d begin to experience
symptoms like shivering, numbness in your limbs and pain from the cold. You’ll know that you're really in trouble,
though, when the shivering stops. This means that you’re in the next, more
severe stage of hypothermia. You’d begin to feel confused, your muscles
would become rigid, and you’d begin to slip into unconsciousness. But, before you pass out you might actually
experience a sudden rush of warmth as the muscles constricting your blood vessels give
out and the last warm blood in your body rushes from your core to your extremities. Assuming you could find a pocket of tropical
paradise warm enough to ward off hypothermia, you’d have plenty of other issues to worry
about. Your immediate problem would be sun and heat
exposure. In extremely hot environments, heatstroke
can set in within hours, and the sun reflecting off of the water all around you can make things
even more unbearable. The first signs of heat stroke are excessive
thirst, sweating, nausea and muscle cramps. Once you actually stop sweating and stop feeling
thirsty, you’ll know you’re in real trouble. Unless you can stay hydrated, you’re doomed
- and don’t even think about drinking the salty ocean water! We’ll tell you all the grisly reasons why
you don’t want to do that in a minute. But first, let’s talk about another danger
of living in the ocean. If you aren’t lucky enough to have a life
jacket or be standing in chin-dip water, exhaustion will get you long before the elements become
a problem. Experts all agree that treading water is the
best way to conserve energy and stay afloat, but even the strongest swimmers can only sustain
continuous treading water for a matter of hours. Even if you can stand on the bottom, a lack
of sleep, not to mention the stress of your situation, can lead to delirium, panic and
even death. Even if you’re able to float or stand, continuous
submersion in water would cause your muscles to break down within a few days and Rhabdomyolysis,
called Rhabdo for short, would set it. Rhabdo is usually caused by excessive exercise,
but long periods of immobility can also cause it. After a few days of floating, your muscles
would become weak and painfully sore, and you’d have trouble walking if you were to
make it to dry land. As your muscles break down they release proteins
and electrolytes into your bloodstream, leading to kidney failure and, if left untreated,
death. With all of these brutal effects of living
in the ocean, it’s no wonder that the Chinese are rumoured to have used water-immersion
as a form of torture! Both heat and hypothermia could have contributed
to the nineteen ninety-eight deaths of Tom and Eileen Lonergan - two scuba divers who
were left behind by their diving party off the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Officials believed they survived their first
night stranded in the open ocean before succumbing to exhaustion or the elements. Rescuers found a message from them scrawled
on an underwater diving slate a hundred miles from where they were last known to be. On top of exposure to the elements, the Lonergans
also might have had to contend with these other horrific results of long-term submersion
in the ocean. Anyone who’s stayed in the bath for a little
too long is familiar with the icky, pruny feeling of wrinkly skin. Believe it or not, this wrinkling is our skin’s
attempt to adapt to life underwater. Constricting blood vessels in our skin create
a pattern of wrinkles that actually improves our ability to grip wet objects underwater. After a few days, though, continuous submersion
in water will start to break down your skin. Your skin would swell and soften and open
sores would begin to form all over your body. Even if the water you were in was perfectly
sterile - which the ocean most definitely is NOT - the pores on your own skin are enough
to cause infection. As your sores are exposed to debris and pathogens
in the water, they would continue to ooze and fester, and begin to attract predators. Sharks are a very real danger to your festering
body in the ocean. In nineteen forty-five, more than nine-hundred
American sailors found themselves adrift in the ocean after their ship was hit by a Japanese
torpedo and sank. Drawn by the sound of the explosion, the thrashing
of bodies and the blood in the water, the survivors were soon set upon a school of aggressive
oceanic whitetip sharks. After four days of battling exposure, hunger
and thirst while being preyed upon by sharks, the remaining three-hundred survivors were
rescued. Of the nearly six-hundred who died, at least
one-hundred and fifty of them were thought to be victims of shark attacks. Sharks aside, there’s plenty of other, smaller
creatures to worry about. From crabs to turtles, to even flesh-eating
sea lice, there are plenty of sea creatures that would consider your decomposing body
to be a tasty treat. The good news is, you probably wouldn’t
live long enough to have to worry about most of these hazards. In all likelihood, you wouldn’t survive
more than three to five days in the ocean before dehydration got the better you. While you can survive weeks without food,
you’ll only last a few days at most without water. Your body loses water in many ways - by sweating,
through your urine and feces, even through breathing. And don’t forget through your tears - you’ll
definitely be shedding a few of those by this point. As your body temperature rises and your organs
begin to shut down, you’ll experience a dry mouth, hallucinations and a lack of urine. The final stage of dehydration is shock - your
skin would turn blue-grey in colour and feel cold to the touch due to a severe drop in
blood pressure, before your organs finally shut down and you die. You may be thinking - “What’s the problem? I’m surrounded by water!” Salty ocean water may help us stay afloat,
but it does nothing for our thirst. In fact, it can be deadly. While your body does need some salt to function
- hello, electrolytes - sea water is way too salty, and actually speeds up dehydration. To rid your body of the excess salt, your
kidneys will produce more urine than you drank, quickly depleting your body of what little
water it has and hastening your death by dehydration. However, just knowing that salt water is deadly
might not be enough to save you. Many a person stranded at sea had become delirious
with thirst and couldn’t stop themselves from drinking the salty water, causing their
tongue to swell and their mouth foam as they succumbed to salt poisoning. In the age of rising sea levels due to global
warming, our bodies’ ability - or lack thereof - to live in the ocean is not very comforting. So what would it take for you to be able to
survive in the ocean? What evolutions would humans need to undergo
to adapt to aquatic life? And, how close are we to making that a reality? If future humans need to learn to adapt to
aquatic life, they can take inspiration from aquatic tribes living around the world today. Take, for example, the Bajau peoples of Indonesia. Nicknamed “sea gypsies” because of their
nomadic, seafaring lifestyle, the Bajau are renowned for their impressive freediving skills
which allow them to catch fish in waters up to two-hundred feet deep. Their underwater prowess is possible due to
their ability to hold their breath for long periods of time - up to thirteen minutes for
some of the best divers. Scientists have recently discovered that the
Bajau people have actually evolved to have larger than average spleens, which lets them
use oxygen more efficiently and stay underwater for longer periods. For most of us with normal sized spleens,
scuba diving is the closest we can get to being Aquaman or -Woman. In July twenty-sixteen, Turkish scuba diver
Cem Karabay set the world record for the longest time spent underwater in open water when he
spent almost six days underwater in the ocean near Cyprus. He lived on a specially-built underwater platform,
and passed the time underwater by playing chess and football with his support team,
or watching TV on his underwater screen. Water pressure is another huge problem for
our fragile human bodies. Even the minimal pressures at surface levels
would cause circulation and breathing problems after prolonged submersion in water. Water pressure can cause our eardrums to burst,
and at only thirty meters deep, the pressure will compress your lungs to half their normal
volume. Even with proper training and equipment, we
are still vulnerable to rapid changes in water pressure. One of the most well-known consequences of
exposure to high pressure is decompression sickness, or “the bends” - every scuba
diver’s nemesis. When you scuba dive with compressed air, your
tank is filled with a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. Your body uses up the oxygen, but the nitrogen
remains in your bloodstream. If a diver returns to shallower, lower pressure
water too quickly, the nitrogen can’t clear from their bloodstream and instead forms bubbles
inside their veins. Think of a can of soda when you open it - as
you decrease pressure inside the can, gasses are released as bubbles. This is exactly what happens to the nitrogen
in your bloodstream during decompression sickness, leading to symptoms like dizziness, headache,
numbness or weakness in arms or legs, and joint pain. Of course the most important part of your
scuba gear is your oxygen tank and breathing apparatus. This is because, unfortunately, humans can’t
breath underwater. While some exceptional humans have trained
themselves for years to be able to hold their breath for impressive lengths of time, even
they are unable to truly breathe underwater. In July twenty-eighteen, Russian freediver
Alexey Molchanov beat his own record and completed the deepest self-propelled dive in history
when he swam to a depth of four-hundred and twenty-six feet - all while holding his breath
for more than two-and-a-half minutes. Holding our breath for even a few minutes
is simply out of reach for most of us. But just because our bodies are not designed
to breathe underwater doesn’t mean science isn’t trying to solve that problem. Humans may not be able to sprout gills, but
scientists in Japan are working on an artificial gill system that will allow humans to survive
underwater for extended periods. The Amphibio system was inspired by a type
of diving spider that has a hydrophobic skin that acts like gills by creating a bubble
of air around the spider’s body. The Amphibio system is made from a hydrophobic
3D printable material, and the system includes a vest covered with air bladders that extracts
oxygen from the water and feeds it into the attached face mask. It’s still in the concept stage, but early
tests are definitely impressive! Liquid breathing is another potential avenue
that scientists are exploring for giving humans the ability to live underwater. The idea of humans getting oxygen directly
from the water may seem far fetched, but it’s actually already a proven medical treatment
for severe pulmonary trauma and even premature babies. In these cases, the patient’s lungs are
filled with a perfluorocarbon, an oxygen-enriched fluid that their lungs are able to draw oxygen
from. This one may sound like something right out
of a science fiction novel or a wellness fair, but scientists in Denmark have recently developed
a crystal-like substance that can aid humans in breathing underwater. The substance, which includes Cobalt crystal,
can bind with and absorb oxygen from the air or water, and that oxygen can be released
by applying a little heat. Who knows, someday soon divers may be trading
in their air tanks for a mouthful of crystals! There’s plenty to worry about when it comes
to living in the water, and that includes routine business like, well, doing our business. When Tim Yarrow set the world record for the
longest time spent underwater in two-thousand and two, he had to find a way to eat and,
yes, eliminate, in his aquatic environment. Yarrow spent a week and a half submerged in
a tank of water in a mall in South Africa, and for those ten days he ate all of his meals
through a tube. His waste was taken care of by a catheter. If the idea of a catheter makes you uncomfortable,
don’t worry - if humans truly lived in the ocean, we would just do as the fish do, and
go on the go. But, we would need to evolve to separate our
respiratory system from our digestive system, so that we could eat in the ocean without
inhaling water. Some scientists believe that humans are uniquely
suited to adapt to an aquatic lifestyle because we evolved from “aquatic apes”, although
this theory has largely been dismissed by the scientific community. It would take at least a thousand years of
evolution for human bodies to adapt to living in the ocean, and if we did, the likely results
would more likely resemble seals than mermaids. Future aquatic humans might have extra body
fat and body hair to help insulate them in cold ocean waters, and they may have longer
limbs and webbed hands and feet to make swimming easier. To adapt to life under water, humans would
need to develop gills or some other method of breathing underwater, and they may develop
cat-like eyes to help them see better in the darkness of the ocean. That’s not exactly the Aqua-man physique
we had in mind... So, what are your thoughts on what would happen
to your body if you lived in the ocean? Do you think future humans will have to evolve
for life in the ocean? What do you think that would be like? Be sure and let us know your thoughts in the
comments!
