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Pugh swims at North Pole
15/07/2007 20:31 - (SA)
Stockholm - British adventurer and swimmer Lewis Gordon Pugh on Sunday became the first person to swim in the icy waters of the North Pole, to raise awareness of how global warming is effecting the polar ice cap.
Pugh, 37, took 18 minutes and 50 seconds to swim one kilometre (0.6 miles) in the minus 1.8-degree Celsius (28.8-degree Fahrenheit) water - the coldest water ever swum in, he claimed in a statement.
"I hope my swim will inspire world leaders to take climate change seriously. The decisions which they make over the next few years will determine the biodiversity of our world," he added.
"I want my children, and their children, to know that polar bears are still living in the Arctic. These creatures are on the front line up here," he added.
The swim, in a water hole where the usually thick polar ice has melted, was to draw attention to the effect climate change is having on the Arctic ice sheet.
According to a recent United Nations report it has shrunk by six to seven percent in winter and by 10 to 12 percent in summer over the past 30 years.
"I am obviously ecstatic to have succeeded, but this swim is a triumph and a tragedy: a triumph that I could swim in such ferocious conditions but a tragedy that it's possible to swim at the North Pole," said Pugh.
Ralf Doescher, an oceanographer at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, told AFP: "Since the 1980s and 1990s the Arctic ice has shrunk.
"The ice has definitely become thinner ... (and water) can now be found here and there. These kinds of holes in the ice are going to become increasingly frequent in the future," he added.
Pugh is one of the few people to have conducted long-distance swims on each of the world's five continents.
In 2004, he became the first in the world to swim the full length of Norway's longest fjord, Sognefjord, which measures 204 kilometres.
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