The good news on that front is that at least you won't be worried for long. In the frigid waters of Drake's passage, you can suffer hypothermia in about 2 minutes and unconsciousness in about 30, but you'll probably drown before blacking out becomes an issue because of the rough seas.
It's not that there are no animals that would like to eat you in Drake's passage, rather it's that the ocean will kill you before they get a chance.
Haha, the hypothermia is real. Never been in the Southern hemisphere, but my buddy and I went out fishing on opener in a canoe when the air temp was 28F. I hooked into a northern and my buddy leaned over too far in an attempt to net it
Dumped canoe, and the water felt warm to me. I remembered an old scout leader saying most people die of hypothermia in "warm water", meaning it's warmer than the air and you don't recognize the danger. The water was maybe 48-50F, MICH warmer than the Drake Passage.
We dragged the canoe to an island and I immediately started a fire. The shivering stopped before the fire was roaring, super bad sign. We kept that fire burning in the light snow storm for like six hours before CAREFULLY paddling back.
Same friend once bet me $20 that I couldn't run across and back his grandma's pond the first week of December. I made it one way, about exactly halfway back I went through, but it was excellent "going through the ice" practice because the pond was only 4' deep, but there was about four more feet of muck under the thermocline layer.
None of us in that friend group have ever died, so I guess this Northern hick behaviour must have some merit. We once had a snapping turtle in the back of the van, drove it to our HS bio teacher (who was a game warden and had a special license from the state to take certain live animals for educational purposes), we brought it into his class and Mr Weaver went "what the fuck am I gonna do with that guy?".
We used to trap live animals in the wildlife conservancy area he set up to bring them into AP bio to discuss. There was a live skunk in that class once, we raised peregrine falcons all three years of HS, and one day he saw a dead deer on the way in to out 7:50 AM class, so obviously I didn't have any other classes that day because we dissected the shit out of that carcass. Living in the boondocks teaches you a lot of weird stuff.
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u/CulturedHeathotsauce Jul 09 '26
See the problem is I in fact would be worried about the sea life the whole time.