S1 E01: Lewis Pugh in [email protected]

Hello everyone and welcome to [email protected]. My name is Yutia and I'm the founder and managing director of Hub101.earth, which is a global open access platform that shares knowledge and also spread the word about solutions for climate, nature and people-positive movements. Today's a special day, we're kicking off our Conversations series in which we all talk to a bunch of really exciting people from all walks of life, fighting the good fight and bringing solutions to the forum wherever they are, big or small of all shapes and sizes. And what better way to start than to speak to Lewis Pugh? Thank you. I learned Lewis, welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here first. You are here. We're definitely the first. So this morning I was thinking, oh, I can prepare an intro for Lewis, but you know, I'm going to just ask him to introduce himself, because you'll do a much better job than me. Ah, okay. So, I'm an endurance swimmer and I'm an ocean advocate, so I've spent the last 40 years swimming in the world's oceans and I try to swim in places which are really threatened and then afterwards I try to get them protected, so yeah, that's what I do. So maybe we can start by, you know, just, you clearly have achieved a list of some incredible feats and which will come to, I'd like to talk about some of that, but maybe let's start from the beginning in terms of how you got into swimming and how you got into endurance swimming. Yes, that is, yeah, I'm an amateur swimmer myself, so I just curious in how you got into it. So I went to school in Cape Town, initially I grew up in England, when I was 10 we moved out to South Africa and I lived in Cape Town and I was very, very lucky because my high school was literally on the beach and so sport was often down on the beach with play, touch rugby and then afterwards we go for a swim and in the distance, I could see Robin Island and a friend of mine had some Robin Island and so I also wanted to have a go at it but I had had no formal swimming lessons, so I went to go get proper swimming lessons. I was woefully, woefully under prepared though. How old were you at that point? I was 17 years old. Wow. Yeah. And I went out to Robin Island and then you got an escort boat next to you for the first hour and it was very, very thin in those days and the waters, waters quite cold and with the first hour everything was fine but by the time I got to the second hour I was starting to get really cold, two and a half hours in, I was extremely cold and then there was a lot of breaststroke and I found out later that the team were actually taking bits whether I would get out but eventually after three hours I finally put my feet down on that sand in Cape Town. Wow. And I knew at that moment that I had fallen in love with swimming and it's a love which has lasted for 40 years, I just loved swimming. That's incredible. That is so inspiring that you started then, there and then and so maybe since then clearly you've gone on to do some, you know, run some incredible campaigns and I thought maybe we would just go through them a little bit, not all of them but so I created a list and I have to read this off because it's such a long list. And I know you campaigned for both Oceans and Rivers so maybe we'll start with Oceans so the Ocean-based ones and I didn't use AI to pull this together so let's see if I missed anything. Okay. So you were the first person to undertake a long distance swimming in every ocean of the world. Yes. I'm going to look at you and you can go ahead. Okay. First to swim across the North Pole. That's true. Wow. First along the length of an English channel, which is incredibly long. Is the highest swim ever near Mount Everest? Yes. Yes. You went under or through an ice sheet and then talked to you? Yes. I did a swim down a tunnel in Antarctica. There's a bit of air in the top of the tunnel but it was just when I read that, I thought how long it was to do that. No, it wasn't holding my breath but it was, it's about as extreme as it gets. Well, yes, clearly and a lot of preparation I guess went into that. And a lot of fear. Absolutely. And most recently just completed the short swim around Mars's vineyard in the Eastern United States. Did I leave anything out? Those are the main ones. All the Red Sea. I think. Yes, I swim across the Red Sea. Yes, so we see. I should have used the air after all. And also the first person to swim across the Red Sea. Of course. Yes. No, there was an incredible swim because I mean, I'll never forget the view underneath me when you swim along those coral reefs. Well, they're absolutely beautiful. Some of the most pristine coral reefs still left in the world. And you look down underneath you or sharks and rays and, you know, topical fish of every sort of color and description and the most vibrant coral. It's so precious. And so you imagine swimming right across all the way along these coral reefs. What a joy. Yeah. It's amazing. Unless it been, I mean, you hear a Red Sea as this beautiful destination. Yeah. But since you went all the way across it, you would have seen it in so many different phases. Yes. Yeah. So out of all of these incredible challenges, so it will campaigns, how, I mean, just, let's talk about the physical element a bit of it and clearly, you know, you talk about the Antarctica ice sheet, that would be very cold. Yes. Which one would you say was the coldest? I mean, they all sound really cold. But they all got the North Pole. Oh, really? Yeah. So just to explain how cold that water temperature was, I just need to give you a range. A normal industrial swimming pool is 27. Mm-hmm. If you swim across English Channel in summer, it's about 18. Okay. I'm going to be able to go to a degree centigrade and I'll go all the way down to five. That's the temperature of the water in which the test, the passengers of the Titanic perished. Oh, wow. Fresh water freezes at zero. The water the North Pole on the day I swam was even colder, so it's saltwater minus 1.7, 29 degrees Fahrenheit, it's unbelievably cold. And I remember standing there about to get into the water and you do ask yourself, you know, how did it get to me being here, but it was a long process to get to get to that point to dive into that water? Yeah. And you prepared physically and mentally? I prepared physically, yes, and awful lot slowly, you know, doing swims and cold run, cold run, cold water, but you know, nobody had ever done a swim in minus 1.7. I hadn't either. I'd done swims in zero, but I hadn't done one in minus 1.7 and I thought to myself, okay, it's a difference in zero minus 1.7, well, it actually turned out to be an awful lot. Wow. Yeah. I can't imagine even what that feels like, even with a finger in it, but it's extremely cold and you've got to want to be in there, but there's also this sort of mental preparation. And so just before I got into the water, my coach gave me two anchors. He said, the first thing I want you to do is I want you to go all the way back to the beginning of your life. I want you to turn around and I want you to tell me all those moments in your life which have molded you into the person you are. And so I told him about moving out to South Africa and then my parents, I was very lucky my parents took me to a big national park with the Ado Elephant National Park. It was one of those moments in your life, you never forget, because we were surrounded by this huge herd of elephants and I remember being the back of the car and that's when my love for nature began. And then I went through other moments in my life, I was at Maritime Lawyer, I was involved with a case dealing with the Exxon Valdez which was a ship which ran a ground spilt all everywhere in Alaska and then you realize how fragile the planet is. And then he said to me, okay, so now we know where you've come from and now he said, now the most fundamental thing is to prepare yourself mentally, I need you to go to the end of your life. I want you to turn around and I want you to answer a very simple question and that is, why did you go to the North Pole to swim and what was your message? And I said to him, I said, David, I had visited the Arctic for five summers in a row and every single summer I saw less than this sea ice, water was getting warmer. I wanted to do a symbolic swim there to really show world leaders what was happening because at the time they were denying it. So it was a simple symbolic swim, you shouldn't be able to swim across the North Pole, but it really turned into a very, very tough swim, but it got a tremendous amount of media attention. It really sort of kickstarted my life as an ocean advocate. Yeah, absolutely. There are these incredible pictures and making it through those waters and now there's a perfect time to actually go into why. That was my next question, clearly all of your campaigns has tremendous meaning. So you've already mentioned one which is the melting of the ice around the North Pole. What are the other reasons why you go on these great adventures? and highlight to these issues. So there are a number of big issues facing our oceans. The first one is climate change. The second one is pollution, especially plastic emission. I'm just seeing it everywhere and the other one is just loss of biodiversity. And so over many years, I'm either doing campaigns talking about the climate, what's happening to our planet, or I'm talking about pollution, or I'm talking about loss of biodiversity. It'll be one of those three. And every sort of two, three years, I've tried to do one big swim with a simple message. The message has to be really simple. And I always hope that the standard is, could a kid or could a 90-year-old, you know, great-grandmother or grandmother understand it. And it takes that box and it's simple. And it also has to be pioneering. I want to try to be the first, because if you're the first, you get the media attention. And it's got to be exciting. You know, some of these swims are quite dangerous. I've got to get up every morning, I've got to train for them. It ticks all those boxes. Then I'm going to go for it. Yeah, absolutely. And your latest swim was the shark swim, which we've already mentioned. But I, you know, tell us about that, because we followed your progress. And I have to say at some point, I was a little bit worried about it. It ended up to be a really hard swim. So it was a 50th anniversary of Jaws, the blockbuster. And I've wanted to do a swim to talk about how important sharks are for so long. And this was just a perfect moment, because you know, sharks were demonized in Jaws. You know, it made it out as if sharks are to get us out to kill us. And, you know, they're nothing of the sort, they're absolutely essential for a healthy ocean. You know, if we want to have a healthy planet, we need to have healthy oceans. And if we want healthy oceans, we need sharks, predators are essential. And so I decided to swim around Martha's vineyard, the whole island, which is where Jaws was filmed. And what I thought would be challenging wasn't challenging. And what I hadn't anticipated though, because we always trained for the fact that you maybe have one or two bad days and you can have to swim in storms, but the first day was beautiful and flat. The last day was beautiful and flat. And for 10 days, it was just a solid storm. And so every day just swimming into a storm and just it was hard work. And then the other thing which was quite challenging about the swim was we have always had a cardinal wall in my swims that we never ever talk about sharks. Because as soon as you start talking about sharks, you're going to start thinking about sharks. And then every shadow then starts looking like a shark and then soon you'll be out the water. But on this swim, I wanted to talk about sharks. And so early in the morning I was doing interviews in Australia talking about sharks late in the evening. I'd be talking to, you know, TV and Canada about sharks and guess what you're thinking about the whole time. You're okay. Just, you know, sharks the whole time. Yeah. Mentally it was a, it was a challenging swim. Yeah. I mean, that film, unfortunately it was so successful and it did put this fear of the open water into many people. It was a music which was so effective. Yeah. You know, it was the original blockbuster. Yeah. But my message was simple that sharks are absolutely essential for a healthy ocean and they're really under threat. You know, the numbers are frightening. It's on average every single day 274,000 sharks are killed around the world. Wow. I mean, really? It's a number which is so difficult to wrap up one's mind around because you multiply that over a whole year. It's 100 million sharks. It is completely unsustainable. It's madness. Yeah. So, you know, we really need to protect these animals as with all predators. Yeah, absolutely. But sharks are the, the predator which has been demonised most in the world. Okay, extremely. Absolutely. And they keep part of the entire ecosystem so you take them out and everything is out of balance. Yeah. So, I mean, it's akin to a lion in the savannah. I can imagine taking hypothetically, taking out all the lions, suddenly then all the builder bears and all the zebra and all the gazelles are going to be eating all the grass and all the bushes and soon there'll be nothing left and then there's going to be an ecosystem collapse. Yeah. And it's exactly the same in the ocean. You take out all the sharks and very, very soon you're going to have a watery desert. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Hi, honey. I mean, there's so much to talk about oceans, but also we want to talk about rivers. Yes. So rivers are a huge part of our identity, our source of life, right, without water there's no life and you have also done campaigns to do with water. I believe you were the first to swim down the length of the river, Tim. Yes. Right. Did you, some past parliament? Yes, I did. It was a wave. I actually got out there. You did? Yeah, it was, it was an interesting story because I couldn't get permission to do it. Oh. And so I decided, listen, I'm just going to do it and try and ask for forgiveness. Anyway, so I got to Teddington where it then becomes the rules change and it's then under the jurisdiction of the harbour master of the port of London. Huh. And he said, you cross that line, Lewis, and I will have you arrested. Oh, wow. Yeah, I mean, really? It's really quite serious. Yeah, it's serious. And so I asked a couple of my friends who were also Maritime lawyers. I said, you know, is there, is there a rule about this? And they said, well, there actually isn't anything in the statute, but they said there must be a residual rule. I can imagine if somebody is just lying in the middle of the Thames on a lie low, surely they're going to be able to be able to take the person out if boats are going to come post. Anyway, we got no permission. And then suddenly, the day before we got to Teddington, we got a message from the Prime Minister who said, please, I've heard it just swimming down the Thames. Get out, get out at Parliament and then come see me at number 10. And it was one of those moments in your life, which is so joyful, because a harbour master then called me up and he said, Lewis, do I have to tell you, if you go past, if you go past, Teddington, I'm going to arrest you. And I said to him, it's going to look so silly, because a Prime Minister has asked me to get out there and just hear the silence on the other end of the body. Yeah. Well, maybe you can take me to the Prime Minister in handcuffs, and wear my speedo and license cap and my goggles. I'll be quite a statement. Yes. Oh, dear. Well, that's amazing. What was that? Well, I can't even remember now. It must have been sort of 2,000, 3 or 4 somewhere around there. Amazing. But I do love swimming in rivers. Yeah. Oh, and two years ago, you swam down the length of the Hudson River in New York State in America. And that's when we met. And I'm wearing the t-shirt today, from-- It was a life. Rivers a life from two years ago. And so yeah, tell us about what you were trying to highlight on that campaign. Well, the Hudson is an amazing river, because 50 years ago is one of the most polluted rivers in America, if not the world. And then they started cleaning it up and literally town by town, factory off the factory. They started cleaning it up. And now it's an amazingly healthy river. Yes, still a lot more needs to be done. But I swam down that river over 30 days, and I didn't get sick once. Now, how'd you tried that 50 years ago? It really would have been life-sfolkening. And so it just shows how, you know, proper investment in care for a river, you can restore life in it. And there was one moment on that swim, which I'll never, ever forget. It was about a third of the way down the rivers. I started to high up in the Adi-Rondak Mountains. And it's amazing. It's just absolutely beautiful. And you got bears walking around and a great big bald eagle just came out of the forest and just started following me all the way down the forest. And then I went into backstroke and there it was just following me down the river. And to think that just a few years ago, they were virtually extinct there. It just shows what happens when you start caring for a river, stopping pollution going into the river, we can restore the health of our rivers, but it takes investment and takes care. Yeah. And constant diligence. Yeah. Absolutely. So there's hope, right? So, I mean, things may look quite dire at times. I mean, certainly hear a lot about the problems that we're facing, which all seem massive and very complicated and interconnected. And overwhelming. Overwhelming. Yes. For anyone individual or anyone institution. And also for the environmental campaigners and for the policymakers, it's overwhelming. But the bottom line is, we have no option. If we're going to have a world where we have clean rivers, fresh air, habitat, planet, we have to take action. Yeah. And I remember doing a beach cleanup in Mumbai. Okay. And the pollution was, I mean, I've never. I'd never been to a beach where I'd seen pollution like this before. I mean, it would literally, when I started the beach clean-up, apparently it was up to the shoulders. - What? - Look at how? I went there and by that time it was down to our knees, but I walked down onto this beach and there was just plastic and twined in and bags and just I've never seen and thousands and thousands and thousands of flip-flops everywhere. Anyway, so I've just never seen pollution like this and the person who was running it was a young lawyer called Afroshaw, who every weekend would go out into the community and get hundreds and hundreds of volunteers to come and start cleaning it. And I said, "Sid Afros, where do we start?" He said, "You started your feet. You started your feet." And it was amazing because at that whole weekend we cleaned it up, we bought bulldozers and they bought lorries in there, we cleaned that beach until eventually we saw sand again. And I'll constantly, every weekend, they cleaned the beach and our turtles have restored. The mangroves are being cleaned, but you have to start somewhere and that your feet is perhaps the best place to start. - Absolutely, because you know where you're ascending with your feet and that you can pick up some rubbish right next to you or why not. - Yes. And one of the biggest mistakes is the belief that somebody else is going to solve the problem, that somebody else is going to do it. Don't wait for somebody else to do it. And every day have we left the water better than it was a day before. - Yeah. - That's amazing. It's really inspiring to just think, you know, everyone can be empowered to do something. I think that's one of the reasons actually. I dived out of the corporate world and into the try to do something different world where Hub 101's mission is really about, you know, sharing and spreading the idea of solutions. - Yes. - And it doesn't have to be big, it doesn't have to be small, it doesn't have to be a certain size or shape. - Yes. - But as long as you have a go at it and connect with other people facing dissimilar problems or thinking along the same lines, that can all go in the positive direction. - Yes. - And I think I'd love to sort of just pick your brains now about you've been looking at and living this and breathing many of these problems sort of for decades. And as you say, you know, definitely start with your feet. Are there any other solutions or top priorities for action that you think is just needed to be that can just make a difference now? - So perhaps I can speak to the person who really cares about the environment who's gone onto your website and wants to know where do I start. I was very, very lucky. We're actually in this room here and this room is called the Desmond Tutu, right? - Yes. - He became the first patron of my Foundaishi. And he was a very, very special person. He'd won the Nobel Peace Prize and he had this ability to lift people up and you believed that you could do whatever he said you could do. He just had this incredible gift. And before any swim or any campaign I was going to do, I'd get a little message for him. And it would be something like this. I'd be able to say I'd be going down to Antarctica to do a swim and he'd say, "Louis, I want to wish you the very best with your swimming Antarctica. God bless you." So he was a bishop. God bless you and give all my love to the penguins and the seals and the dolphins. Your father, the arch. And you know when I got an email like that and I was enrued sailing down to Antarctica, I thought to myself because he had overcome so much in his life. He'd been the forefront of the fight against a part of it. I thought to myself, "If he is telling me I can do this, I can do this." He passed away a few years ago and a journalist called me up and asked me about how especially he was and I told him the story and he said, "You know, it's unbelievable. So many people have told me that they also used to get messages from him like that." So he had the, what he was doing was he was sowing seed. He was helping so many people and uplifting them just messages of support. So find somebody who can be an inspiration, who can keep you going when you think, "Oh, I don't know how I can do another day." Find those people who can keep you going, lift you up and get you going in the right direction. That's absolutely essential. Yeah, that's amazing. That is incredibly powerful. Yeah, because I think there's just, could it's tough? It's tough. It's tough. And especially when you're hit with so many, there's a lot of negativity. You're swishing around. I don't live in La La land. You know, I go down to a beach and I see plastic pollution there or I could be high up in the Arctic. You know, and I walk across a beach and I see plastic pollution, which has obviously not come from here. It's come on an ocean current from a long way away and it's bags and it's bottles and it's fishing boys and it's nets and it's in its robes. And then you see a polar bear swim ashore and climb out over this. And then you think to yourself, it can be really, be frank with you, really upsetting, really depressing. And then you have to switch and you have to set yourself right. What can I do to try and clean this beach up? What can I do to go to the beginning where that plastic entered the stream? Who can I get to keep me going? Because otherwise you can, yeah, it can get you down. Yeah. And I noticed on your foundation that one of the things that you're championing for is the expansion of the marine protection. Yes. Yes. Yes. How, how well do you think we're doing with that in terms of, you know, the, I think, was the global biodiversity framework includes protection of, this was so called 30 by 30, my protection of 30% of the land and seas by 2030. Would that be, would that be something great for oceans if that came about? It would be, it would be truly, truly amazing if we can get that across the line. I mean it really would, you know, we've now committed. So the vast majority of the countries of the world have committed to 30 by 30, protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030. And these commitments are very, very important. But we have to turn those commitments into actual action to get it done. And that's where the challenges have, yeah. And what do you think would help that along a bit more? Is it the individual governments and the, the, the local and maybe even regional policy makers needs to be on board? What would it take? Because we've got an agreement of you at a level. Yes. Well, let me take you back to the beginning of the genesis of that. And, and I think that's a good story on how you can get things across the line. So, about a thousand five, about a thousand, to about 2,500 people are from across the English Channel. So it's 33 kilometers. But nobody had swam the length of the English Channel, which is not 33 kilometers, but it's 528 kilometers. And so I decided I wanted to do a campaign to highlight how little of British waters were properly protected. And so at the time it was seven square kilometers. Seven. Seven. So in the rest, control for oil, you can drill for gas, water companies can pour raw storage into the, into the into rivers and into the sea. The Royal Navy and other NATO Navy can do gunnery exercises. In 2018, just seven square kilometers were fully protected. We had the beautiful nature. We have some incredible nature in Britain of puffins and whales and dolphins was left alone. And I grew up in Plymouth on the English Channel. And so I said to myself, I want to do a swimmer on the full length of this. Anyway, so I went to the start and I admit there were a lot of TV, TV companies that come down there. But Sky News said to me, Lewis, we'll give you daily coverage. So we'll we will cover this whole thing for that for the whole duration of the swim. And every day we'll go off and interview different people. Maybe it's a fisherman one day. Maybe it's a government minister the next day. Maybe it's an energy provider. Maybe it's a Royal Navy captain. We're going to use you to tell the story about this amazing piece of it. body of water. Anyway, so I dived in and I started swimming along the coast. Every single day, I was sent to the British government. We need to properly protect it. 49 days later. I finally arrived in Dover. And there to meet me at the end is Michael Gove, who was the environment secretary, the environment minister at the time. And he walked up to me, and he, with a really big smile, and he said, "Louis, congratulations we've heard you." I said to Michael, "I wish you had heard me before I had to swim for 49 days." And I said to him, "The science is really clear. The science is that now with climate change, we need to be protecting at least 30 percent of the world's oceans now by 2030 for them to recover." Anyway, he committed to me on the beach that the UK would go for this target. A month later, the UK went to United Nations. They stood up. They said, "We're going to go for this? Would other nations join us?" And then one nation, after the next, after the next joined them. And eventually now, four years later, virtually every single country in the world has agreed it. So what I never ever imagined that would be possible. So what it's showing is that public pressure, TV, people tweeting and blogging, and speaking to their local MP, all had a big impact. And it got to the prime minister. And the end result was that the UK stood up, and other nations joined them. It took you 49 days in the channel, but it took incredibly worthwhile though. It really felt meaningful, but remember, a commitment is one thing. We have to hold them to account. That's the role which I do, which is trying to get each and every one of them to absolutely deliver on this. And to really act, there's one thing to talk of, another one to act. And it costs money. It costs money, but it's a great investment. So at a time when there's a cost of living crisis and governments will find it difficult to fund things to awesome to fund, protecting the oceans may seem like a luxury. It's not an absolute necessity. I think the other big challenge which we face right now is just everything that's happening in the world. Here we have wars taking place. We have genocide taking place. The environment, just a few years ago, it really was so much more in the news, but it's dropped off the news. And so that's why I'm constantly looking for swims and looking for campaigns to try and bring it constantly onto the agenda so that we don't forget how important the environment is. You can't forget about it and try and solve it in five, 10 years time. Yeah. It has to be done today on a daily basis. Absolutely. We have to keep it up to pressure. Yeah. And so then speaking of the shoot, though, so if you were to look ahead, what would you like to see in five, 10, 20 years time? So five years time when we get to 2030, I mean, I just a dream of a world where we see 30% fully protected. It would be such a great, a great, great start. Really, and oceans which are, which are bound to fall. You know, I've, I've swam in parts of the world's oceans which are, which are still bound to fall. I did a swim down in in South Georgia where, where, you know, you have leopard seals and elephant seals and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of king penguins swimming around you. And to swim in places like this to see a bountiful ocean is so joyful and is so rich. I pray that we can restore our oceans to that top of, to that top of level. Looking further ahead, I want to see young environmental campaigners coming through. Yeah. That would be very, very exciting. And you know, when it comes to environmental campaigning, everybody has their own different styles. Some people want to have direct action. There would be very confrontational. Others want to try and seek consensus. Others are happy to paint, to do music, to do art. Whatever it is, I want everybody to have the opportunity and have a voice and trying to get the message about that we have one precious planet and we all have to work together. So I'd, I'd love to see that in as a sort of the next big movement, seeing some really neat, interesting creative ideas coming through to keep it up onto the agenda. It's amazing. I think this brings us pretty much to the end of our chance. I mean, I know there's a Native American proverb that says that, you know, one day we visited Calgary Zoo to pick it up there and it was written on the wall and I took a picture of it. Yes. I just wrote it down. I says, we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children. So we absolutely have to be bigger than ourselves and think about our place on not just our planet in this universe. You know, this planet is our home. It's, we are here because of the conditions that allowed us to, to exist and so we absolutely need to do a better job in looking after it. And so, so here's really hoping that we can all help to contribute to this future that we are. We want to be a part of. Yes. So thank you so much for joining me today. It was just so inspiring to speak to you always. Thank you. And thank you for fighting the good fight and will definitely be cheering you on whatever you choose to do next. Every two, three years, you said. Every two, three years. So, so we will see what we can't wait to see what's next. I call one in the mind already. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, you're not going to tell us. You can tell us later, is all right? I'll come and tell you later. Okay. They're me. Well, thank you, Yandu. Thank you so, so much. Thank you.