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
Mate really? How can we describe something to you that you can’t even imagine as you have never experienced oceans or large bodies of water. It’s cold, it’s dark, and you must spend a lot of energy to simply exist on top of the water. Especially in the dark and you cannot see the waves, all it takes is one catching you by surprise and there goes all of your oxygen and a lungful of salty water. Being lost at sea is completely different to being lost at land, the risks are incredibly higher because of the risks life said. Have you ever closed your eyes and tried walking in unfamiliar territory? It’s almost impossible, the same exists for swimming with the added consequence of a vast drain of energy and a high likelihood of dying.
You definitely have a better chance if you fall in during the day, but it depends on circumstances. The people in the boat might not see you fall in, and it’s very hard to spot a person in the water. If the boat is going at any decent speed it would be gone before you even resurface, and there is no chance of them hearing you.
In both night and day time drifting makes it very hard to survive and be rescued in the water
When you fall into the ocean wearing body armor, helmet, night vision, radio, with a rifle and magazines, and possibly breaching equipment you’ll drown really fast. A regular life vest may be to cumbersome to wear so they probably didn’t have that. An expanding life vest of some sort seems like an obvious choice but it’s clear they weren’t wearing that either for some reason not obvious to me.
Edit: Actually now that I think of it, supposedly one SEAL hit his head after falling off of the boarding ladder and then fell into the water, presumably unconscious. Another SEAL then dove in after him to try save him. Perhaps they were wearing a expandable life vest of some sort that requires manual activation and one was unconscious and the other was trying to save his comrade who was sinking fast in his equipment so neither of them inflated their vests.
Haven’t read the news so not sure about specifics. However, depending on height fallen from hitting the water can be as hard as hitting land. Water can be cold – hypothermia. Sharks attacking? Would have thought seals would be pretty good at swimming but if injured in the fall then not likely to survive if not found quickly. If at night, did they have any flotation devices handy, torches or flares?
There are many factors. One SEAL (it’s an acronym so it’s all caps) falling in and the other one jumping in after them already sets them at a disadvantage because they were likely wearing their shoes and not their fins – (Although sometimes they use hybrid systems which allow the fins to fold up toward their shins, permitting normal walking on solid ground.) But a water to ship boarding is less likely than the use of a small zodiac or other small boat, suggestive of their unlikely use of fins all together.
Add to this that if SEAL 1 was rendered unconscious and the following SEAL (SEAL 2) jumped recovering an unconscious body in larger waves while wearing shoes and no floatation – the difficulty to maintain their ability to float is largely diminished.
Lastly, is what you somewhat touched on, the vastness of large bodies of water with moderate to rough sea states while barely maintaining buoyancy makes it’s difficult to find a bobbing head at night.
The best way to increase your chances would be to jump in during daylight into calm water, assist a conscious teammate, with a flotation device and fins. Clear skies would also be a requirement for ISR to observe these events and relay your location to recovery elements- low cloud decks would be prohibitive.
Even in calm waves with someone that is wearing highly visible clothing, during the day, and even when you are expecting someone to fall in, you are damn near invisible. It’s like a “Find Waldo” picture that changes every second. Everything is moving, including you and the person you are trying to find. That is why if you are on the boat and actually spot where the person is, your only job is to stand there and keep eyes on them, pointing or guiding. If you look away, you will likely lose them again.
Sound carries well on water, but you are competing with a *lot* of noise. The motor on the boat, people on the boat yelling at each other to try to find you, the waves, and anything else.
If you are on a large ship that is moving near full speed, your position will be almost impossible to find again, even if someone saw you fall in.
Mmmmm.. US has a lot to lose if admitting to its best and brightest repelled by enemy fighters, I wouldn’t rule out the fact they were shot boarding, birthing a heroic fall and brotherly sacrifice coverup.
Hope I’m wrong, and regardless those men are heroes, and we owe them our freedom. Salute.
In other news, countless social workers labor to ensure homeless addicts have a safe place to sleep in the sub-zero tonight. Not Navy heroes, but ones saving lives all the same. Salute.
There are many factors at play here.
But the biggest ones are likely the time of day and what the weather conditions are like.
Falling in during night time makes things a lot more dangerous since it is really difficult to see someone when it’s pitch black.
Also, combine this with rough seas and strong winds, then a person can get swept away or pulled under in a few seconds. If it’s windy and rough weather it can also be very hard to hear someone even if they are yelling.
Now, since these were SEALs, some of the most well trained soldiers there are, who fell in it’s likely that the weather was very rough, since otherwise they likely would have had no issues because of their training.
Another factor is the amount of weight they were carrying. Clothes and equipment severely limit your ability to swim.
The place where they fell in is also important. My understanding is that the fell in right next to the ship they were boarding. Being in the water right next to big ships is EXTREMELY dangerous as the ship will be floating around and might crush you if you end up under it.
If the ship is moving this becomes even more dangerous.
So these are all important factors.
If you fall in during daytime in calm water without big ships nearby, then your chances of survival are drastically improved.
Falling into water isn’t inherently dangerous, but the factors surrounding the fall can make it so.
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.
They were lost in the middle of a storm with 8 foot high waves.
Imagine a large truck hitting you at 20 miles per hour, except that truck is made out of water. The fact that the truck is made out of water dulls for the force of impact a little bit, but its still enough to knock you out.
Even if it doesn’t, there’s no way to swim against that and the wave isn’t just moving you side to side – its also moving you up and down. If you’re weighed down by equipment then you’ll just immediately go under.
If you have something on your body that is more buoyant than you are (such as a life jacket), that difference in buoyancy will cause the life jacket to be ripped away from your body after a few waves. An 8 foot tall wave has a such a sharp slope that you won’t float on the surface over the wave – the wave will simply pass over you, tearing at your body and everything you’re wearing as it does.
Which gets to the next point – you’re not just getting hit by one wave. You’re getting hit by dozens of waves every minute – so its like getting hit by a truck made out of water over and over and over again.
Further complicating anyone’s ability to save you is that within a few seconds you and the boat you came from will likely be quite far from one another. In between you and the boat is at least one 8 foot wave, which neither of you can see over. Then there’s wind, rain, and the noise the waves themselves make which is *loud* – so nobody will hear you screaming for help if you’re more than a few feet away.
Finally, the water is cold, which very quickly saps your energy.
In a situation like that, a person will last anywhere from 0 seconds to under a minute, depending on what they’re wearing. The fact that anyone who could rescue them is likely going to lose sight of them within a few seconds means that you are going to die if you fall out of a boat into a storm on the open ocean.
Smarter everyday did a series with the us coast guard about sea rescues.
One issue is that in water the only thing seen is the head, going out to distance it can be a smell speck. That’s also with high visibility clothes and in the day time.
Also unlike land, there are currents that carry anything in the water with it and can change the way it travels.
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