Its nice to look at the horizon when you can see it. Most of my most seasick adventures involve the engine room or closed in spaces. The moment that I can get my eyes on the horizon, things take a nice turn. Here’s a random Youtube moment of some fairly rough seas.
To study posture at sea, Stoffregen made contact with the U.S. consortium that runs scientific research ships. “I’m really an oddball for these folks, because they’re studying oceanography, like hydrothermal vents. Here’s this behavioral scientist, calling them up,” he says. He boards a ship when it is traveling between different projects—for example, in this study, he rode on the research vessel Atlantis as it went between two points in the Gulf of California. “It had nothing to do with the fact that I like cruising near the tropics,” he jokes. Since the ships are between scientific expeditions, he can sleep in one of the empty bunks normally reserved for ocean scientists, and crew members volunteer to take part in his study.
The study compared the same people standing on dry land—a dock in Guaymas, Mexico—and aboard the ship. In each experiment, the crew member stood comfortably on a force plate and focused on a target—either something about 16 inches in front of them, or a far-off point; a distant mountain when standing on land or the horizon when standing on the ship. On land, people were steadier when they looked at the close-up target and swayed more when they looked far away. On the ship, however, they were steadier when they looked at the horizon.
via UnderwaterTimes | Centuries Of Sailors Weren’t Wrong: Looking At The Horizon Stabilizes Posture.