BY GIANNI UBRIACO
Former Laurentian University professor Ronald Wallingford
has done some research on how to survive being capsized in cold
water that could save lives.
He carried out experiments in 2000 and his conclusions were
later published in the European  Journal of Applied
Physiology.Wallingford shared his research at  the 15th
annual Ontario Hunter Education Instructor's Conference
recently.
"Don't keep saying stay with the boat under all conditions,"
he advises.
 "If you're pretty close to shore and you have a
personal floatation device, you're better off to go for it."
He pointed out that every case is different and that it's
difficult to say how close to shore one has to be before he'd
advise trying swimming the distance.
His experiment showed that the average person can swim an
average distance of 889 metres in cold water before being
incapacitated or unable to make effective progress.
He concluded that if a person is stranded from shore within
a few hundred metres, the average person can swim to safety,
provided he or she is wearing a flotation device.
This, he points out is essential to survival. "Make sure you
wear your personal floatation device in cold water. Your float
should be on before you hit the water."
He suggested that people do their own safety drills by
wearing  personal floatation devices and swimming in cold
water to get familiar with it so they'll be more confident in
the case of an accident.
Twelve males and five females were recruited from the university to participate in the study.
None of them had been previously trained for cold-water
swimming and only one had some training as a varsity swimmer.
Each subject wore standard clothing believed to be typical for
early spring or late fall outdoor activities, as well as a
flotation device. The farthest any individual swam was 1,740
metres. The shortest distance was 420 metres.
Wallingford came up with other conclusions, especially
concerning triceps (on the arms) skinfold thickness.
"We found in our study that the people who had the most
adipose tissue or the biggest skinfold swam the furthest and
those that had the least, swam less," he said. "From this, it
looks prudent now for people who travel on water to put
coverage over their arms or to wear a full-length jacket."
That was also true, but to a much lesser degree, for the
patellar skinfold (at the knees).
Other characteristics such as abdominal skinfold, percent body
fat, and personal fitness were not found to be big factors in
determining how far an individual could swim.
Wallingford first got interested on the subject while moose
hunting. He wondered if he'd be able to survive if he was ever
stranded in cold water.
He looked up previous experiments, like the one carried out by John Hayward  from the University of Victoria back in 1975, but wanted to come up with his own conclusions.
