Cold Water Paddling and Fishing PSA -- Be safe

[rwp2101]

This is my absolute favorite time of year to fish, and I'm sure many of you would say the same. This is also the most dangerous time of the year because of the warmer air temps but still cold water. A lot of deaths this time of year get wrongly attributed to drowning when they're actually the result of cold shock or autonomic conflict. With so many of these drownings being misclassified, it gives people the wrong impression. Just being able to swim won't mean a thing. I learned a lot about the dangers of cold water paddling myself over the last few years so here's the summary:

- When being submersed in water below 60 F it's unlikely that you'll be able to control your body's gasp reflex unless you're a practiced Polar Bear Club member. This means that when you're submersed in cold water you will involuntarily take a big gulp!
- Being submersed in cold water triggers both your body's cold shock response and your body's dive reflex. This can be life-threatening because one of those "sub-routines" tells your heart to speed up and the other tells your heart to slow down. This simultaneous triggering of the body's sympathetic and parasympathetic systems is autonomic conflict and these confusing/crossed electric impulses can result in a deadly arrhythmia. I experienced a mild, but still quite disturbing, version of this myself one spring and it's what led me down this rabbit hole.

References for those interested:
- cold shock: http://www.seakayak.ws/kayak/kayak.n...256A640054C71F
- autonomic conflict: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22547634/