Briton swims Antarctic in campaign for three marine sanctuaries
A British man will plunge into sub-zero waters in the Antarctic on Tuesday to campaign for the creation of three huge marine parks to stop overfishing. Lewis Pugh is credited with playing an important role in the agreement earlier this year to create the world’s largest marine protected area (MPA) and make fishing off limits in much of the Ross Sea, a bay in the Southern Ocean.The endurance swimmer last year took to the region’s freezing waters to fly the flag for the MPA, and met and lobbied the Russian government, which had previously blocked the plan. He calls this mix of extreme swimming and hobnobbing with officials “Speedo diplomacy”. “The main significance is the precedent it sets,” Pugh said of the Ross Sea marine park, which was agreed by 24 nations and the EU in October.Now he wants to create three more similar sanctuaries for marine life – in East Antarctica, the Weddell Sea and Antarctic peninsula – which together with the Ross Sea MPA would collectively cover around 7m sq km, an area around the size of Australia. As part of his campaigning, he plans to swim on Tuesday for 5km in -1C waters in the Bellingshausen Sea, which is along the west side of the Antarctic peninsula. That will be followed by a 3km swim in the “whale graveyard” around South Georgia, the British Overseas Territory early 20th century. Bad weather and the freezing water will be the main challenges for Pugh, who has previously swum across the north pole and in Himalayan glacial lakes. When scientists studied him, they found his core temperature naturally rises by nearly 2C ahead of a swim, to cope with the cold.
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on Dec 14 2016. Filed under News at Now.
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