Hypothermia Expert Explains Sea Survival

CAPE MAY — When someone enters cold seawater they have two immediate problems: avoiding drowning due to the cold shock response, which is less a problem for someone wearing a survival suit but a significant problem for someone who did not don a suit, and not becoming unconscious from hypothermia.
That information comes from the nation’s foremost authority on sea-survival, drowning and hypothermia, Dr. Alan M. Steinman. He has served as Director of Health and Safety for the U.S. Coast Guard and as a rescue physician on numerous search and rescue missions.
The results from his hypothermia studies serve as the basis for coldwater survival time charts. Steinman is not participating in the investigation of the Lady Mary sinking, which took the lives of six crewmembers, but he said he has read news reports of the accident.
The Herald contacted Steinman, who lives in Washington State, to learn more about hypothermia at sea.
“What happens when you suddenly enter cold water from a relatively warm environment, there are reflexes that go on in the body called the cold shock response with a sudden gasp, you inhale and then your breathing rate goes up dramatically, your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure goes up…” said Steinman.
He said if your head is in the water while you are inhaling in the gasp or if you are trying to control your fast breathing, you can drown in the first minute or two. If you survive the first two minutes, your next concern is keeping your head afloat and not drowning in the next 10-15 minutes.
Muscles of the arms and legs get cold quickly which makes it difficult to swim, said Steinman. After that, a person’s body gets cold and hypothermia becomes a major problem, he said.
“Significant hypothermia doesn’t occur usually for an hour or so even for someone that is not wearing protective clothing,” said Steinman.
Cold water survival is dependent on your ability to swim and keeping you head above water, avoiding panic and thrashing, how turbulent the ocean is, whether you have a life jacket or personal floatation device or life raft available or anything else floating in the water you can hang onto. Other factors are the water temperature, your physical characteristics such as height, weight and body fat, any medical problems, the type of clothing you are wearing, what you do in the water such as swimming around or holding still.
Steinman said holding still in cold water is better than swimming around. Other survival factors include whether you have a signaling device such as EPIRBs, flares or handheld radios and the nearest of rescue personnel.
“The end point will be, unless you’re in a life raft, the point at which your brain is to cold to maintain consciousness and you just can’t keep your head above the water any more,” he said.
If your body temperature drops to the mid 80s, you are likely to lose consciousness. Steinman said a person with a body temperature around 86 degrees can still be resuscitated.
He said a survival suit donned properly with the zippers all the way up and good face and wrist seals provide very good protection from hypothermia.
“People have survived 24 to 36 hours in survival suits,” said Steinman.
Another factor is if a person maintains the strength to combat the seas.
Steinman said the floatation characteristics of a survival suit make a person “float like a cork, horizontal on the surface of the water.”
“In rough seas and big waves, those waves, particularly if they are breaking, will have a tendency to roll you over face down and then you’ll sort of have to fight to get yourself face up again,” he said.
How skillful a person is in keeping themselves face up is a factor.
When a survival suit leaks, “it is big trouble,” he said. The suit will still keep a person on the surface of the water but when water enters a suit through a zipper that is not fully closed, it can fill with water. Body heat will warm up a survival suit to some degree but water may continue to wash in and out of a leaky zipper, which significantly degrades the value of the thermal protection of the suit and reducing survival time, said Steinman.
He said the will to survive is extremely important. Steinman said there have been instances where crewmembers put on survival suits but where trapped inside their sinking boat.
The raft of the Lady Mary was empty when spotted by a Coast Guard search and rescue crew. Steinman said it is very important to use a raft to get out of the water for longer survival.
“It is the most important thing I can advise people in a coldwater situation,” he said. “Water will take heat away from your body 25 times faster than air at the same temperature.”
He said air is a very good insulator.
“If you are surrounded by air, you are a lot better off than being surround by water,” said Steinman.
He conducted experiments for the Coast Guard in a rough sea environment that found a subject would be better off sitting on an overturned boat even with rain, wind and wave splashing on them than being in the water.
Since 2001, Steinman has served as a scientific advisor on drowning, hypothermia and sea survival to the Coast Guard for accident investigation and cold-water survival training and research studies. He teaches survival training classes.