Vineyard Haven, Mass. – A British-Surfrican resistance athlete approaches the finish line of its Swimming of several days of 62 miles (100 kilometers) Around Martha’s Vineyard on Monday, with the aim of becoming the first person in the first person to swim all on the way.
Lewis Pugh began swimming several hours a day in 47 degrees (8 degrees Celsius) on May 15 to raise awareness about the difficult situation of sharks when the movie “Jaws” approaches its 50th birthday. He wants to change public perceptions and encourage animal protections at risk, which said the film defamed as “villains, as cold blood murderers.”
“It was a movie about sharks attacking humans and for 50 years, we have been attacking sharks,” he said before falling into the ocean near the Edgartown lighthouse. “It’s completely unsustainable. It’s crazy. We need to respect them.”
Pugh, 55, said this would be among his most difficult swings, which says a lot for someone who has swam near glaciers and volcanoes, and between hippos, crocodiles and polar bears. Pugh was the first athlete to swim in the North Pole and completed a long distance swimming in each of the world’s oceans.
But Pugh, who often swims to raise awareness about environmental causes, has been appointed pattern of the United Nations of the Oceans, said there is no swimming without risk, and that drastic measures are needed to transmit their message: around 274,000 sharks are killed worldwide, a rate of almost 100 million every year, according to the American association for the progress of science.
“Jaws”, which was filmed in Edgartown, renowned Amity Island for the film, created the successful Hollywood culture when it was released in the summer of 1975, establishing new box office albums and winning three academy awards. The film would shape the views of the ocean in the coming decades.
Both director Steven Spielberg and author Peter Benchley expressed their regret that the viewers of the film were so afraid of sharks, and both then contributed to conservation efforts as their populations decreased, largely due to commercial fishing.
Day after day, Pugh has entered the cold waters of the island with only trunks, a cap and glasses, sleeping bad weather like a nor’easter thrown 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain in parts of New England and flooded streets in the vineyard of Martha.
Pugh’s effort also coincides with the first confirmed sighting of the New England’s Aquarium this season of a white shark, on the nearby Nantucket Island. Just in case, it is accompanied by safety personnel in a boat and a kayak, whose row is using a “shark shield” device to create a low intensity electric field in the water to deter the sharks without damaging them.
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See an AP Photo Gallery around Martha’s Vineyard and the beginning of Pugh’s swimming here.
