COP27: How Lewis Pugh braved sharks and transport containers on the planet's first swim throughout the Crimson Sea

Muricas News  — 

Having beforehand swum on the planet’s coldest waters sporting simply his swimming trunks, for his newest problem Lewis Pugh went to the other excessive.

When he grew to become the primary particular person to swim throughout the Crimson Sea final month – a feat which took 16 days and noticed him encounter crashing waves, busy transport channels and extraordinary sea life – Pugh toiled in opposition to what was by far the warmest ocean he’s ever skilled.

Because the solar beat down on his again and the water temperature typically crept above 30 levels Celsius (86 levels Farenheit), Pugh discovered himself battling exhaustion and dehydration – even when he restricted himself to swimming on the coolest occasions of the day.

“It’s a major problem,” he tells Muricas News Sport, “and the problem comes as a result of one feels simply so weak and missing in power.”

Pugh, an endurance swimmer from the UK, is accustomed to tackling excessive circumstances in a few of the world’s most distant oceans.

However the marathon swim from Tiran Island in Saudi Arabia to Hurghada in Egypt posed a myriad of difficulties, not least as a result of it concerned weaving by transport site visitors within the Gulf of Suez – the stretch of water connecting the Suez Canal to the Crimson Sea.

And if negotiating a gentle stream of oil tankers and freight containers wasn’t problematic sufficient, Pugh was additionally buffeted by massive, rolling waves as he fought in opposition to uneven waters for almost all of the swim.

In complete, he coated a distance of roughly 76 miles (123 kilometers) from October 11-26, swimming between 3.5 and seven.5 miles every day.

“My physique is de facto, actually hammered,” says Pugh, a couple of week after ending the swim. “Each single day, these waves had been crashing up in opposition to me … It was simply twisting my physique backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.”

The swim additionally carried the ever-present danger of encountering a shark, of which there round 40 totally different species within the Crimson Sea, in line with Pugh; probably the most harmful are hammerheads, oceanic whitetips, oceanic blacktips and tiger sharks.

As safety, the underside of Pugh’s assist boat was outfitted with an digital machine able to repelling sharks inside a four-meter radius, which means any run-ins had been few and much between.

However the sea life Pugh did witness at shut quarters left him mesmerized by its magnificence.

“While you swim throughout these coral reefs, it’s completely unbelievable as a result of the colours are so vibrant – the yellows, the purples, the greens, after which all of the wildlife that lives in them,” he says.

For sections of the swim, Pugh was joined by open-water swimmer Mariam Saleh Bin Laden – who grew to become the primary Arab, first Saudi and first girl to swim from Saudi Arabia to Egypt – and Egyptian swimmer Mostafa Zaki.

The aim of the swim was to shine a highlight on the world’s coral reefs – house to the earth’s most vibrant marine ecosystems – and their precarious standing amid the local weather disaster.

Scientists have predicted that about 70% to 90% of all residing coral will disappear within the subsequent 20 years within the face of rising sea temperatures.

Based on findings from an Australian authorities company printed earlier this 12 months, warming waters have already brought on coral bleaching in 91% of reefs surveyed alongside the Nice Barrier Reef.

Pugh, a number one determine in marine safety because the UN Patron of the Oceans, says the coral and wildlife within the Crimson Sea have tailored to the excessive water temperatures over 1000's of years, making it house to a few of the most resistant coral on the planet.

However different locations inform a unique story.

“I did a swim just a few years in the past throughout the width of the Maldives – a bunch of islands in the course of the Indian Ocean – and I keep in mind simply swimming over these coral reefs, and so they had been completely unbelievable,” says Pugh.

“I went again 10 years later. The water had risen; the temperature of the water had risen just a bit bit; the animals had all however disappeared, and that coral was utterly white, bleached, useless.”

This week, Pugh has traveled to the COP27 local weather summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt – a location he handed throughout his swim throughout the Crimson Sea.

There, he plans to talk with world leaders concerning the gravity of the local weather disaster and what it means for the way forward for the planet – simply as he did eventually 12 months’s COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, after swimming throughout Greenland’s Ilulissat Icefjord.

“I see the polar areas and the coral reefs of the world as the 2 floor zeros of the local weather disaster,” says Pugh. “And the explanation why I say it is because it’s so evident in these elements of the world that we have now a really, very severe disaster.”

A part of the explanation for Pugh’s long-distance swims is to steer world leaders to introduce marine protected areas.

In 2015, for instance, he swam down the Ross Sea in Antarctica, which in the present day accommodates a protected space spanning 1.55 million sq. kilometers – the biggest such space on the planet at roughly the dimensions of the UK, Germany, France and Italy mixed.

However Pugh additionally needs the swims to inform tales about elements of the world which are sometimes neglected.

“While you see harm on land, it’s so very, very evident,” he says. “Underwater, it’s way more difficult. With these swims, I attempted to take folks – take the general public, take the media, take world leaders – to the scene of the crime and present them what’s taking place and clarify why it’s vital that we shield these locations.”

Nonetheless recovering from his Crimson Sea swim, Pugh is not sure of the following ocean he'll plunge into sporting simply his swimming briefs. For now, he's targeted on COP27 and the guarantees made by the world’s leaders within the face of the local weather disaster.

“We have to have commitments that are a lot shorter, a lot sharper,” says Pugh. “And our commitments must be far higher than what I’ve seen earlier than.”