A pee within the sea is a drop within the ocean | Social etiquette

I’ve lengthy been puzzled by the widespread perception that if nature calls whereas swimming within the sea, one ought to sprint ashore in quest of a bathroom (Summer etiquette: 47 important guidelines – from intercourse to sunloungers to buying in swimming trunks, 14 July). Why that is thought of the extra virtuous choice escapes me. The contents of the bathroom are, in any case, handled and finally discharged into rivers and seas. The ocean merely cuts out the intermediary.

Assuming one is nicely away from different bathers, the environmental distinction appears elusive. The Atlantic Ocean has the capability to deal with a couple of hundred millilitres of extremely diluted human urine. It has been coping with whales for quite longer than it has with us.

The morally superior bathroom flush requires a number of litres of drinkable water to get rid of one thing that the ocean has been recycling since life first crawled out of it.

Perhaps our discomfort just isn’t with the act itself, however with imagining it. As so usually, etiquette proves much less a matter of science than of psychology.
Andreas Swadlo
Great Cheverell, Wiltshire

Some of my happiest reminiscences are of swimming within the sea off the Connemara coast, on abandoned seashores, the closest public bathroom a number of miles away, and the subsequent landfall to the west someplace in Newfoundland. For the king’s former butler to inform me that I mustn’t have had a pee is absurd. Never did the expression “a drop in the ocean” appear extra apposite.
Andrew Wardrop
London

Is it OK to pee within the sea? The final information to summer season etiquette concludes that it’s not. “Go to the nearest lavatory.” This is definitely to allow a privatised water firm to do it for you.
Tony Coghan
London