If I was a fellow passenger and one of the others (in spite of making what they thought to be proper preparations beforehand) became stressed enough to experience an enormous need to defecate or… for that matter… vomit, then having a toilet nearby would be an absolute blessing. And who knows if one’s fellow passengers actually did “go” before a dive; some people are just damn stupid.
(excerpt) Anxiety-producing events can trigger digestive issues, including diarrhea, constipation and nausea. This is because your gut and your brain are linked. Anxiety poop is your body’s reaction to extreme stress.
There’s an alternative. Along with her vintage Tom Swift Jr. novels, a close family friend would give me her Readers Digest magazines. One true life story was of a horrible incident aboard an undersea habitat. One of the scientists there used a potty which evacuated waste via a high-powered vacuum pump. Using the potty, the scientist formed a tight enough seal that most of his large intestine was pulled from his body when the pump was switched on. I was kid when I read that, and I don’t recall most of the details… but the fellow survived and – to an extent – surgery effected some sort of repair and “workaround”.
I seem to remember that urban myth also being told about the dangers of airplane toilets if a large person (effectively sealing the toilet seat) flushed the toilet while still seated.
I suspect it is as true for the undersea habitat as it was for the airplane, but willing to be proved wrong if there is some documented evidence.
My wife dove to 4500m once on the Shinkai 6500 with a couple Japanese pilots whom she barely understood. The dive was something like 8 hours long and they kept offering her coffee. I can’t recall if there was a way to pee or not, but she wouldn’t have wanted to go in front of the pilots anyway, so she held it.
Unless you’re an oceanographer whose job requirement includes long stays in undersea habitats, I wouldn’t worry. And I suspect that such vacuum-assist potties (assuming any are still being made) would be designed to avoid what happened to our large intestine-less hero.
And don’t think about eating sausages that have natural casings.
