The lobster plunge

On every cruise ship, guests have to attend a mandatory safety briefing before the ship is allowed to leave the port. Guests are instructed on where to gather (‚muster‘) in case of an emergency and how to don a life jacket.

When you are sailing in polar waters, however, a life vest is not enough. In these waters, the temperature of the ocean can actually drop below the regular freezing point of water due to the sea’s salinity. And this – literally! – freezing cold water induces physical reactions that may, if you’re unlucky, lead to you drowning even if you are a good swimmer.

The cold, obviously, is a huge risk. Immersed in water, our body temperature drops at 25 to 30 times the speed at which it drops in cold air, meaning that you could freeze to death within a mere ten minutes. But to do so, you first need to have survived the ‚cold shock‘, which sets in within 30 to 180 seconds after immersion and is often an even greater risk than the unforgiving temperatures themselves: When our nerve ends come into contact with icy water, they react by forcing us to take an extremely deep breath, followed by a state of agitated and uncoordinated breathing and loss of orientation. This may lead to you inhaling water and drowning – well before the cold water has had a chance of killing you through hypothermia.

The best way of dealing with cold shock is preventing it, and that’s why the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea prescribes, among other measures to increase safety, that any passenger ship sailing in polar waters needs to carry one immersion suit for each person on board. An immersion suit is a one-piece suit with built-in feet and gloves and is made of a special waterproof material that keeps the cold water out and the body heat in. Being watertight, it also adds buoyancy and its bright orange colour makes it easy to spot in the water – and is probably why it is lovingly referred to as a ‚lobster suit‘. This survival aid must be worn by every person on board if a ship needs to be abandoned in polar waters.

So, voilà: Here’s a photo of me in a lobster suit. Which is the only way I would ever voluntarily take a polar plunge.