Sarah Ferguson – the endurance athlete and Guinness World Record Holder, not the Duchess – is doing something incredible for our oceans.
To help bring the public’s attention to the devastating impact of plastic pollution in our oceans and rivers, the endurance swimmer has decided to do something drastic. Ferguson has taken on the challenge of swimming along the coast from Durban to Cape Town. That’s about a 1500km swim!
Ferguson announced her ambitious plan at the Sublime World Ocean Day Swim, stating that she would swim the distance in stages. However, the logistics of her plan are still in their early stages, and so “we are giving ourselves a full year into 2023 to complete the swim,” she stated.
The figurehead and driving force behind Breathe Conservation is no stranger to these kinds of challenges, as she broke the Guinness World Record for swimming non-stop around Chile’s Easter Island, reports IOL. While this was undoubtedly a big challenge for Ferguson, she states that her proposed plan to swim South Africa’s coastline may be her biggest challenge yet.
“This swim is going to be a super big swim and far more challenging than the Easter Island swim,” she said.
We love to see incredible women doing incredible things, and bringing awareness to our polluted oceans has never been more pertinent. Nearly 8 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean each year, which is the equivalent “of setting five garbage bags full of trash on every foot of coastline around the world, according to stats by National Geographic.
Plastic pollution has become a major problem and is threatening marine life and ecology. Nearly 90% of the world’s big fish population has been expended, and 50% of coral reefs have been destroyed.
For more information on Sarah Ferguson and her mission, visit her website.
Picture: Sarah Ferguson Facebook
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