SCOTT DETROW: This past week, endurance swimmer Lewis Pugh became the first person to swim around the island of Martha's Vineyard. It was a nearly 60-mile swim that he completed over 12 days, battling frigid water, rough winds and the constant thought of what might have been lurking beneath him. Great white sharks migrate through the waters around Martha's Vineyard during the summer, and the island was also the filming location for the movie "Jaws," which turns 50 this year. To Pugh, it was a perfect opportunity.
LEWIS PUGH: It was a movie which has shaped the narrative about sharks for 50 years.
DETROW: Every couple of years, Pugh tackles an extreme swim to raise awareness for marine life and the delicate ecosystems of our waterways. I asked him how he got started.
PUGH: I did my first big swim when I was 17 years old. I swam from Robben Island back to Cape Town, and it was a really tough swim as a young kid. And I remember putting my feet down at the end on the sand and thinking to myself, wow, this has challenged me. This was something very, very special. I knew right at that moment that I had found a sport which I have adored. And so every single year I have tried to do a swim which is a bit hard, a bit tougher, a bit colder. It wasn't like I was 17 years old, and I thought, OK, one day, I want to do a swim around Martha's Vineyard.
DETROW: What was uniquely challenging about Martha's Vineyard?
PUGH: The thing which made Martha's Vineyard a tough swim was a combination of factors. The water was very cold. There were constant waves, and the wind blew for 10 days, and then the distance. The other thing which made it tough was that in nearly 40 years of swimming, we've always had a rule in my team, and that is we never talk about sharks because if you talk about sharks, then very, very soon, you're going to be thinking about sharks. And if you're thinking about sharks, then you're going to get nervous in the water, and very, very soon you'll be out of the water. But on this swim, it attracted so much media attention from all over the world, so I was speaking about sharks all day long. So you can imagine what I was thinking about when I actually got into the water later in the day to do my swim.
DETROW: So the idea was, I'll swim around Martha's Vineyard, where much of "Jaws" was filmed, and I'll show that it's safe to do.
PUGH: So it's not so much that I was out there to show that it's safe or to show that you can go out and hug a shark. What I'm trying to show is what is happening to sharks. So globally, the data is very, very shocking. So on average, 274,000 sharks are killed globally every single day. I mean, it's complete madness. It's an ecocide. It's happening right now. I mean, you take those numbers - 274,000 every single day - and you multiply that over a year, it's 100 million sharks are killed globally every year.
DETROW: Since you weren't, as you say, hugging sharks, can you tell us about some of the precautions you took to make sure you were safe doing this swim?
PUGH: Yeah, so I had a kayaker right next to me. And then I also had a boat very, very close to me, and everybody kept a good lookout for sharks, especially when we came among seals. So you know that when you've got seals in the water, not far away, there are going to be sharks. And Cape Cod now has become a global hotspot for great white sharks.
DETROW: This is an interesting point, though, because you're talking about wanting to raise awareness and protect sharks. And yet, there's a very real concern that you have when you're swimming in open water about them and making sure you're doing it safely.
PUGH: Absolutely. You know, I'm normal. I'm frightened of sharks, OK? I remember the first time I saw "Jaws" was - I was probably a 12-year-old boy, and I remember the music, the soundtrack. It was so frightening. But now, having swam for so many years, I'm now terrified of a world without sharks because a world without sharks is a world where the ocean isn't in balance.
DETROW: And yet, at the same time, you were very happy to not directly run into one during the swim.
PUGH: If you're going to be an endurance swimmer, and you're going to swim in places like Martha's Vineyard or the Cape of Good Hope or the Red Sea, you will encounter them. And here's a rub - when you see a shark, it's actually a magnificent thing to see. They are - they're really beautiful, right? They have survived five mass extinctions. They're older than the dinosaurs. We need to educate ourselves about these animals. We need to respect them, and we need to protect them. And when you see a shark in the ocean, it's a wonderful sight because you know that that's a healthy ecosystem.
DETROW: That is endurance swimmer Lewis Pugh. Thank you so much for talking to us.
PUGH: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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