What if humans had gills and could breathe underwater like fish? How great it would be to be able to swim alongside dolphins and sea turtles for as long as you like. Here’s what would happen if we could breathe underwater.
Certainly humans are not qualified to live in water. How long can you hold your breath?
If you are not a professional freediver, and you are not a Bajau, who can stay underwater for 13 minutes, you can only hold your breath for about 2 minutes. But if you don’t practice, you will definitely want to give up after only 30 seconds.
If we could take a deep breath underwater, our lives would completely change.
In fact, just being able to breathe oxygen in the water is not enough to make you a fully aquatic inhabitant. Why is that?
Because if you move to the deep ocean, you will lose heat . That’s when your body temperature drops below 35 degrees Celsius. Your heart and nervous system will malfunction, your organs will completely fail. You cannot survive more than 90 minutes in cold water.
Living underwater, you can swim alongside dolphins and sea turtles for as long as you like.
But what if you don’t swim that deep? Can you settle near the water?
When we say our bodies are not suitable for living in water, we are not just talking about breathing. Not only do we not have enough hair or fat to warm our bodies and prevent hypothermia, but we also lack flippers. Of course, you can buy a pair, but the truth is that our limbs can’t swim efficiently. Our eyes are also not adapted to see underwater.
But if you’re not near the reef, there’s not much to see. Get ready for 24 hours in the dark and muddy environment.
You will need to learn sign language because you won’t be able to speak. Your vocal cords won’t be able to function when your lungs are filled with water.
Forget texting, get rid of all non-waterproof electronics. If you’ve ever dropped your phone in a pool, you know it can’t work.
The gills won’t help us move around underwater, but it will help us in many other ways.
Underwater construction is much safer. You will not die from falling from a tall building under the ocean.
We can switch to a new public transport system: the underwater subway. The rushing water will take you to your destination. Don’t forget to wear a neoprene jumpsuit to stay warm.
Going by underwater subway, we will see how polluted the ocean is. We started cleaning up the trash, all the plastic that ended up in the ocean and the chemicals we dumped. We will start to plant more salt-tolerant food crops such as quinoa, beets, sea-radish… for food and others like ruppia for fish and shrimp farming.