I previously wrote an article about the dangers of drinking seawater in survival situations. If you haven’t read that article, you can go ahead and read it over now, or read the crux of the article here:
When you drink salty water, from the sea or the ocean, you’re putting both salt and water into your system. The problem is that the amount of water you take in is nowhere near the amount you’ll need to expel the salt, and if you keep drinking the seawater, you’ll keep adding to the amount of salt you need to get out of your body. When you drink water from the sea or ocean, your body needs more water to get rid of the salt than it’s getting out of the seawater itself. Essentially, when you drink seawater, you’re dehydrating yourself.
So as I was saying in the previous article, water + salt = dehydration.
I’ve seen it suggested on a few different websites that you actually can drink small amounts of sea water in survival situations, and that it will save you from dehydrating if you only take small sips here or there. One such website (the link is here if you want to read the whole article) states:
Should you find yourself at high sea and it’s been a few days since it last rained, it would be possible to drink small doses of seawater, just one spoon of seawater at 20 minute intervals, drinking very slowly and letting the saliva in your mouth reduce the saline in the water you have swallowed. A man named Alain Bombard demonstrated this a few decades ago in an experiment called “Voluntary Castaway.”
Well I’ve taken the time to look up this “Alain Bombard” fellow, and even very surface research gives me a good understanding of why such a statement should not be believed. Quoting Wikipedia’s article about him:
[Bombard] theorized that a human being could very well survive the trip across the ocean without provisions and decided to test his theory himself in order to save thousands of lives of people lost at sea. […]
Bombard’s claim was later tested and contested by Hannes Lindemann, a German physician, canoeist and sailing pioneer […] Lindemann wanted to repeat Bombard’s trip […], but found that he needed fresh water (from rain) most days. Lindemann later claimed that Bombard had actually taken along fresh water and consumed it on the ocean, and that he had also been secretly provided further supplies during his voyage.
So you have one man, a biologist yes, but one single solitary man nonetheless, making a claim about how he found it was possible to stay alive on small amounts of ocean water without first purifying it. Then you have another man excitedly trying to prove his experiment right and coming up short. I don’t think that’s reasonable enough evidence that it is possible to survive on salty sea/ocean water at all. It’s far more likely that Bombard fudged his results than that he was correct.
Do yourself a favour. Don’t test out Bombard’s theory if you’re ever lost in the wilderness. Wait for some rain water. Purify what you’ve got. Just don’t drink that salty seawater straight out of the ocean – big or small amounts.
(For those who scrolled down to skip reading the article and just want the consensus, no: you absolutely should not drink even small amounts of seawater in survival situations. Seawater will dehydrate you further, whether you drink small or big amounts.)
So there you have it. A theory at least partially debunked.
Bombard has not been Debunked by lone skeptic. Much of what he said was validated by navy testing.
To be clear though, Bombard did not advocate just drinking sea water. His survival was dependent on rainwater, catching fish and drinking their fluids as a source of salt free water, and sparing intake of seawater.
I’m really curious on one thing:
Sea water contains approximately 3.5% salt. That would mean in 1L of sea water, 3.5g approximately are salt. If daily salt intake is 6g a day for the human body, wouldn’t we be okay with 3.5g of salt?
Is it more of the fact that our kidneys would not be okay with it or am I just missing something here? Is that why the teaspoon experiment you mention works?
Hey Nitesh,
Small error in your calculation:
1L of water = 1,000g
1,000g x 3.5% = 35g
also recommended intake is is less than 2.3g per day.
Therefore, drinking 1 litre of salt water will be more than 15 times the daily recommended intake of salt.
how much seawater to get your daily recommended sodium ? ~65ml, or about 2 shots.
How about the case of Aldi, a 19 years old boy who stranded at sea for 49 days? Basically, he is like the real life “Life of Phi”. It said that he drank seawater to survive. Maybe human is more adaptable than we can imagine (or theorised) after all.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45623130
More more information on (not) drinking seawater, this is a very good article, including desalination methods:
https://water.usgs.gov/edu/drinkseawater.html?sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwip7uPB8JvVAhXHv1QKHflGC8MQ9QEIDjAA
the only way to ingest sea water for hydration is through a sea water enema, there has been many survival situations where people survive using salt water in that way, because the lower intestines absorb water. that is the only way to survive and stay hydrated in this situation – remember this –
I really need to look into this. Have heard many times that it works, though I really don’t understand why! Need to spend some time researching so I can figure that out.
I have been drinkins seawater for 2 years now. I know people from many places in the world that drink half a liter seawater per day and every body is okey, and hardly ever get sick, like myself.
Have you investigated Rene Quinton, who saved thousands of people from death in the early 20 century, just by drinking and injecting his patients with seawater?
Have you seen dozens of testimonies of pain and diseases healing on youtube , Griselda Donatucci s page? How about the volunteer survivors of the sea experiment conducted by Aqua Maris Founation in Spain?
Please avoid misinformation.
Did you read the article? I’m talking about for survival situations, where you cannot get ahold of freshwater to drink. If you drink seawater on top of regular freshwater, that’s your business. If you drink seawater as a complete replacement, that is not okay, you will dehydrate yourself further, no matter how little seawater you end up drinking.
Again – survival situation. Not normal, I’m at home I can do as I please situation.
That’s somewhat misleading. In a survival situation, you definitely need access to freshwater. There’s no doubt about that. However, if you are low of food or salt you may start to be deficient in sodium. If that’s the case, then yes, you should consume small amounts of sea water to get your intake of sodium. Just don’t replace it with fresh water.
On a related note, I would greatly discourage folks to forgo drinking urine. Some books as well as TV shows have put Urine drinking out there as a viable way to hydrate if you are unable to procure fresh water. This is probably not a great idea. Urine is waste for a reason. It contains toxins and by products of metabolism that your body did not want in it in the first place. Harvesting the water from urine is a much better option and can be done using a still or filtering system. Just don’t use your kidneys to filter it again.
I have to agree with you there. The absolute only time I would ever say it *may* be okay to drink urine is if you were ultimately so dehydrated (and have no freshwater whatsoever around you) that you’d probably die regardless of whether or not you drank it. Then I think it would be like a last “what have I got to lose” measure. Of course you can’t survive off urine alone, so even if it did prolong your life somewhat, you should hope to be rescued or to find fresh water very soon after, else I can’t see you surviving long at all.
Drinking urine is very dangerous over time, it’s undeniable. Which is why it should never be regularly used as a replacement for fresh water.
In miltary surival courses as a last resort and they mean as a last resort drink the urine , but can only do it once and that’s if you cant use a solar still .
I would think it would depend on the concentration of the urine. If the urine is dilute, then your body has effectively wasted water that could be used for survival, but if it is of the maximum salt concentration possible, then as no process is 100% efficient, you would probably uses as much or slightly more water to get rid of it again.
The real danger in drinking urine is not dehydration but kidney failure.
Anecdotal evidence here:
I have done it.
As a last resort.
And, I obviously made it. But I do not think it was the urine.
By the time I realized i was lost and the Arizona spring on the map wasnt there, it was sundown, and I had to make camp. Id already been most the day without water. After restless night hallucinating about rain and waterfalls, I shared a glistening cup of fresh brew with the golden dawn.
It was downhill from there. It was so thick and yellow. And it felt like it put my body in more shock, than helped it. IDK. I think that by the time comes that drinking your own urine is a last resort, it is too concentrated to be of value. Not conclusive, but I wouldn’t do that again.