2 American Navy Seals are declared deceased today after one fell into the Gulf of Aden and the second one jumped in in an attempt to rescue.
I live in a landlocked country. Never really experienced oceans or the water.
The 2 seals fell during the night time. Pitch black. But couldn’t they just yell and the other members could immediately shine a flashlight on them? I know I am missing something here.
Why are chances of surviving very slim when you fall into the ocean? I would assume you can still swim. Is the main cause of death that you will be drifted away by the ocean waves and cannot be located?
Would chances of survival significantly increase if you fell into the ocean during daytime? Surely even with the naked eye you can still see the victim before they are carried off by ocean waves?
Thank you.
In: Planetary Science
ELI5:
The ocean and really any large body of water for that matter is impossibly large to imagine if you have never seen it. Literally water and nothing else as far as you can see.
Night on the ocean with no other sources of light is really dark. In the modern world you are constantly getting bombarded with light sources even from several miles away bouncing off clouds. Not so on the ocean.
When treading water only the human head is readily visible, even in calm water. Human heads are really small comparatively. Navy SEALs would be laden with not only dark clothing (due to clandestine nature of their work) but also with lots of tactical gear.
To your question: With no reference points on the ocean it is extremely hard to determine how far you’ve traveled past something you dropped in the water, say even if that object was stationary. Which in this case, it isn’t. If the waves are choppy, and currents moving. The second something or someone hits the water if you don’t constantly keep an eye on them you’re subject to lose them as it is not easy to determined where they’ve gone.
If you take that and combine it with everything I said above it gets extremely difficult. That person that is now in the water, you’re really only looking for their head, which is probably covered in dark clothing / gear, in a swelling sea, they very may well not actually be above water. All you have to provide you light to look for this incredibly hard to see person is a flash / floodlight. The longer it takes you to find this person it gets harder to find them as the ocean is incredibly large and there is no reference points.
All the while, for that person to stay above water for a chance of you to see them they are quickly draining their energy. So it’s a ticking clock in an incredibly difficult situation.
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