Endurance Swimmer Lewis Pugh Nears Completion of Historic Martha’s Vineyard Swim to Raise Awareness for Sharks
British-South African endurance swimmer and environmental advocate Lewis Pugh is on the verge of making history as he nears the finish line of a 62-mile (100-kilometer) multi-day swim around Martha’s Vineyard. If successful, he will become the first person ever to swim the full perimeter of the island, as per The AP.
Pugh, 55, began the challenge on May 15, braving frigid 47-degree Fahrenheit (8-degree Celsius) waters for several hours each day. His mission is to raise awareness about the rapid decline of global shark populations and to push for stronger conservation efforts — especially as the iconic film Jaws, which helped spark decades of fear around sharks, marks its 50th anniversary.
“It was a film about sharks attacking humans, and for 50 years, we have been attacking sharks,” Pugh said before one of his swims near the Edgartown Lighthouse, a filming location for Jaws, which was released in 1975. “It’s completely unsustainable. It’s madness. We need to respect them.”
Pugh’s campaign comes amid alarming statistics: around 100 million sharks are killed each year, or approximately 274,000 every day, primarily due to commercial fishing and the fin trade, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
No stranger to extreme endurance challenges, Pugh was the first person to swim across the North Pole and to complete long-distance swims in all five of the world’s oceans. He has faced dangerous conditions ranging from glacial waters to wildlife-rich rivers with crocodiles, hippos, and polar bears. But he has called this swim one of the most grueling of his career.
The swim also coincides with a confirmed white shark sighting off the coast of nearby Nantucket — the first of the season reported by the New England Aquarium. Pugh is accompanied by a safety team, including a kayak escort using a “Shark Shield” device that emits a low-intensity electric field designed to deter sharks without harming them.
Weather has added to the difficulty. As Pugh swam day after day in only trunks, cap, and goggles — no wetsuit — a nor’easter dumped more than 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain across New England, flooding roads on Martha’s Vineyard.
Pugh, who holds the title of United Nations Patron of the Oceans, has long used swimming to draw attention to environmental crises. His current effort is also a symbolic response to Jaws, which, though a cinematic milestone, contributed to widespread fear and misunderstanding of sharks. Both the film’s director, Steven Spielberg, and author Peter Benchley later expressed regret over the public’s reaction and became supporters of shark conservation.
