When people drown

What happens when you drown?

“The instinct not to breathe underwater is so strong that it overcomes the agony of running out of air. No matter how desperate the drowning person is, he doesn’t inhale until he’s on the verge of losing consciousness. At that point there’s so much carbon dioxide in the blood, and so little oxygen, that chemical sensors in the brain trigger an involuntary breath whether he’s underwater or not. That is called the ‘break point’; laboratory experiments have shown the break point to come after eighty-seven seconds. It’s a sort of neurological optimism, as if the body were saying, Holding our breath is killing us, and breathing in might not kill us, so we might as well breathe in…Until the break point, a drowning person is said to be undergoing ‘voluntary apnea,’ choosing not to breathe. Lack of oxygen to the brain causes a sensation of darkness closing in from all sides, as in a camera aperture stopping down. The panic of a drowning person is mixed with an odd incredulity that this is actually happening. Having never done it before, the body–and the mind–do not know how to die gracefully. The process is filled with desperation and awkwardness. ‘So this is drowning,’ a drowning person might think. ‘So this is how my life finally ends.’”

Quoted from The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger, published by W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.

Last week a Chinese tourist drowned, just off the reef from Lao Lao Bay. He was 32 years old and was the most recent of many tourist drownings. Tourists have drowned at Managaha, at Forbidden Island, at San Antonio beach, and other local swimming spots.

There are no posted warning signs. I believe that signs could save lives; that these tragic drownings could have been prevented.

Even a simple caution, such as, “If you swim outside the reef, the sea may take you, and you won’t come back. Staying in shallow water can reduce your risk of drowning.”

The time it takes from when the current first pulls you under until the time you are dead is approximately 3 minutes.

“People drown because they thrash about in the water or expend all of their energy trying to fight the ocean.

‘If you’re on the beach and see somebody else caught in a rip current, call for help from others; if you have a cell phone dial 911 right away. Don’t dive in and swim out to the person. It’s too risky to swim out there yourself unless you have a raft or life preserver with you. Rip currents are the ocean’s number-one killer.”

Source (edited from): https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceanography/rip-current2.htm

I have been in the shallow part of the lagoon at Pau Pau Beach, and felt a current try to drag me out. I got out of the water. No sense risking it.

The only way to prevent future drownings—by either tourists or residents—is for the DPS, the Red Cross, or other local safety agency to post warning signs every 100 feet. Even then, some individuals will still succumb to the ocean, but fewer than if there were no signs at all.

Signs are cheap; human life is not.

Russ Mason
As Teo, Saipan