Dive In

Nothing sparks awe and evokes magic quite like swimming wild. That’s what I was told when I happened to leaf through a book Why Swim Wild in Waterstones bookstore a week ago. You might have also heard the claim that wild water ignites that playful, childlike glee.

My Greek friends nodded in agreement. They took us on a speedboat at Chios today to show us the way wild water releases all the feel-good hormones and endorphins. If I have learnt one thing swimming in wild water, it is the saltiness of Aegean Sea. 

That reminds me of the interesting osmoregulation of sharks living in an environment of high salinity. To survive in salty seawater, sharks handle the challenge by maintaining high concentration of urea in their body fluids. If not because of urea, sharks can’t achieve a body osmolality similar to that of the ocean surrounding them. If not because of similar osmolality, the sharks could have died from “drying out” when water is lost by osmosis.

That also explains the unpleasant odour when a shark dies: their urea breaks downa nd is converted to ammonia. Yikes!