Visual acuity, color vision, and visual search performance at sea

Visual acuity and color vision were tested during a search and rescue exercise at sea. Fifty-seven watchkeepers searched for orange and yellow life rafts during daylight and for lighted and unlighted life rafts at night with night vision goggles. There were 588 individual watches of one hour each. Measures of wind, waves, and weather were used as covariates. Daytime percentage detection was positively correlated with low-contrast visual acuity and negatively correlated with error scores on Dvorine pseudoisochromatic plates and the Farnsworth color test. Performance was better during the first half-hour of the watch. Efficiency calculations show that color vision selective screening at one standard deviation above the mean would increase daylight search performance by 10% and that one standard deviation visual acuity selection screening would increase performance by 12%. There was no relationship between either acuity or color vision and life raft detection using night vision goggles.