Drinking seawater is dangerous and should be avoided, especially in survival situations. When a person drinks seawater, their body takes in both salt and water but cannot expel enough salt through urination. This causes the body to become more dehydrated as it works to remove the excess salt. While desalination can turn seawater into drinkable freshwater, it requires energy and equipment that may not be available for stranded individuals. Attempting to drink seawater will only accelerate dehydration and death from lack of drinkable water.

1. MORE THAN JUST
SURVIVING
Why You Should Never Drink Seawater – Especially in Survival Situations
Story by elise Xavier
Illustrated by Kella Randolph for earth science class

2. Salty snacks
• Story adapted from a blog:
February 18, 2014 By Elise Xavier |
Updated: May 25, 2017
• You know how eating salty food
makes you feel thirsty?
Understanding why you should
never drink water from the ocean
or sea, especially in survival
situations, is easy when you keep
this scenario in mind.
This Photo http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jfcY_R7liGA/TGh3j-VJoMI/AAAAAAAAAHE/E1Pk8f2Y0pk/s1600/0000065470.jpg

3. Sea water, ocean
water and salty snacks
Sea water, ocean water, and salty food are all
similar because they have high
concentrations of salt. Although the human
body does need some salt in order to stay
healthy, too much is dangerous for you.
When you ingest high levels of salt, by
drinking seawater or eating salty food, your
body tries to expel what salt it doesn’t need
so that it can keep you healthy.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/171/429388973_c5493ae7cc_z.jpg?zz=1

4. Dehydration can kill
Most of the time, this is no problem. Your
body’s way of flushing out toxins and
correcting the imbalances in your system is
through expelling these excesses in your
urine. In order to get rid of more toxins or
excesses, all your body needs is more water.
The sensation of thirst is your body’s way of
telling you it needs that water. Of course,
sitting at home eating a bag of chips, this is
easy to fix: fill a glass and drink, and you’ll be
good to go. But when you’re lost in the
middle of the wilderness where suitable
water is hard to come by, becoming too
thirsty can ultimately mean dehydration.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/wjaI0.jpg

5. Do not drink salt water
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.
https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/323205/fped-06-00028-HTML-
r1/image_m/fped-06-00028-t011.jpg

6. you’ll become more
thirsty
That’s why after drinking seawater, you’ll
become more thirsty than you were before:
because you’re causing your body to need
even more water than before you drank the
saltwater.
This Photo by
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DxMTh28Gmfc/S9dBHVQDjdI/AAAAAAAABUI/Fd2Z5
-_dXiY/s320/foto-podista.jpg

7. It will always make you
worse off
All this to say, do not drink seawater as it
stands. It will always make you worse off
than if you had never drank it at all. Drinking
seawater when you’re dying of thirst will only
make you die of thirst faster.
This Photo http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2389/2137126869_7f37b54267_z.jpg

8. Thirsty? How 'bout a
cool, refreshing cup of
seawater?
.No, don't take us literally! Humans cannot drink
saline water. But, saline water can be made into
freshwater, which is the purpose of this
portable, inflatable solar still (it even wraps up
into a tiny package). The process is called
desalination, and it is being used more and
more around the world to provide people with
needed freshwater. Most of the United States
has, or can gain access to, ample supplies of
fresh water for drinking purposes. But, fresh
water can be in short supply in some parts of
the country (and world). And, as the population
continues to grow, shortages of fresh water will
occur more often, if only in certain locations. In
some areas, salt water (from the ocean, for
instance) is being turned into freshwater for
drinking.
Image: A floating "solar still" can be used to convert
seawater to freshwater.
Credit: Landfall Navigation.
https://water.usgs.gov/edu/pictures/wss-desalination-
solar-still.jpg

9. It is hard to get
rid of all that salt
• To sustainably drink water from the
ocean or sea, you’ll need to get rid of all
that salt first. While this is possible to
do, it’s not a particularly easy task,
especially in survival situations.
• Image:
http://www.gabrielediamanti.com/files/
gimgs/20_gabriele-diamanti-
eliodomestico-prix-hemile-hermes-
2011-explanation-2.png

10. Desert area distillation
plant
The "simple" hurdle that must be overcome
to turn seawater into fresh water is to
remove the dissolved salt in seawater. That
may seem as easy as just boiling some
seawater in a pan, capturing the steam and
condensing it back into water (distillation).
Other methods are available but these
current technological processes must be
done on a large scale to be useful to large
populations, and the current processes are
expensive, energy-intensive, and involve
large-scale facilities.
https://water.usgs.go
v/edu/pictures/desal
inationplant.jpg