Meri On Soe

'Meri on soe' = Sea is warm (Estonian). Together with Estonia and some other 12 countries Poland shares a sea. In German it is called East Sea, in Estonia West Sea but in English it is called Baltic Sea - It all depends on point of view on sea : ).

As I like to swim very much I had a little conversation at work on water temperature at Sydney Sea during the winter. My colleague made this face of frozen frog while saying that it may drop until 16 degrees of Celsius. Try to imagine his surprise when I told him that the average temperature in Polish part of Baltic Sea goes up as high as 16 C during the summer. And this is a peak time. Everyone goes to swim then. The conclusion was super optimistic - I can swim all year long in Australia : ) Today on the beach i met very few people. It is autumn here - 25 C 'only'. The water was awesome. I spent there around 5 hours : ).

Meanwhile I had a big dilemma. I started to feel a pressure in my bladder. Toilet was very away. I remembered from lessons on biology what is the real reason for urea production. All of us is processing amino acids - I mean all of us (fish, dogs, cats, humans). It is because all of us is metabolising proteins from the food. The waste product is toxic ammonia (NH3) and every organisms has to get rid of it as efficiently as possible. Fish are shameless, they extract it right away through any whole (mostly via gill) into the sea. Land creatures like mammals can't go this way because of water concern. From ammonia they synthesize urea ((NH2)(NH2)CO) what reduces its toxicity and helps to save water. It is even proven that urea has healing properties, babies in mother belly swim in their own urea, so after all those deliberations I decided to warm up a bit the sea :)