i must have heard a million times that if you're stranded on a desert island or (better yet) floating on a sad little raft made of bamboo in the middle of the ocean, you are never, under any circumstances, to drink seawater. yeah, we do have a certain percentage of salt in our bodies, but there's four times as much of the stuff in the ocean, so your kidneys have to work harder to excrete all the excess ions, and that means more urine so you end up with less water than you started with. i know all this.

but my dear dr. brown, animal science professor and intellectual love of my life, taught us a neat little trick today in wildlife nutrition:

1. catch a fish (i know, i know, already it's hard. but it's better than dehydration, yes?)

2. put the fish in a sock. (a fish is 80 percent water, after all.)

3. wring out the sock and collect the water in something (yes, your mouth would work fine here). the sock serves to filter out some of the salt, although you'll have to try your best to ignore the aftertaste.

4. you can eat the fish afterwards.