The Vortex Swim/Photo credit: @osleston
- Swimmer Ben Lecomte is making his way through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch right now. He’s kicked through 371 miles of trash.
- The garbage patch is essentially a vortex of plastic trash in the ocean between Hawaii and California. It’s bigger than two Texases.
- Lecomte spoke with Business Insider from his boat and said "the most disgusting thing is the amount of microplastic that we capture in our nets every day."
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, swimmer Ben Lecomte is kicking through trash.
Lecomte swam across the Atlantic Ocean — from the US to France — in 1998, and he tried to become the first person to swim across the Pacific last year, traveling 1,753 miles before calling it quits.
This year, he decided to plow through a swirling vortex of garbage between Hawaii and California known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
"I’m not trying to go for any record," Lecomte told Business Insider from the sailboat that’s following him as he swims. "It’s a unique opportunity to show exactly what is under the surface."
The human race dumps about 8 million pounds of plastic trash into the oceans every year. For context, the average 16.9-ounce bottle of water weighs less than 13 grams, so there are at least 35 water bottles in a pound of trash. But of course, bottles are not the only litter in the sea: there are abandoned fishing nets, laundry baskets, toilet seats, toothbrushes, and much more.
Currents sweep up a lot of this plastic and carry it to a handful of locations in the ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the most well known of these trash vortices — it’s double the size of Texas and now holds 79,000 tons of trash.
That’s what Lecomte is swimming through. He wants the effort to bring more awareness to the issue of plastic consumption and show people what the garbage patch really looks like.
"I want to share what it is through swimming and bring people with me," he said.
Here’s what Lecomte’s journey has looked like so far.
Lecomte wanted to log at least 300 nautical miles in the garbage patch (roughly equivalent to 345 miles) because it’s estimated that the world produces about 300 million tons of plastic every year. So he is swimming more than one mile for each million tons.
The Vortex Swim/Photo credit: @osleston
This isn’t his first big swim in open water. He swam across the Atlantic — from Massachusetts to France — in 1998. Upon arrival, he proposed to the woman who’s now his wife, Trinh Dang.
Reuters
Last year, Lecomte attempted to become the first person to swim across the Pacific. He made it about a third of the way from Japan to California before he called it quits.
Seeker/The Swim
Lecomte told Business Insider at the time that he was already considering a swim across the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
"It’s important that we go to the patch, and that we take samples from the patch, that I open that window and share my experience," he said. "What I see, what I feel, and how I feel when I swim through the patch."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – hbrueck@businessinsider.com (Hilary Brueck)