Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Lewis Pugh Swims The Meltwater He Wants To Refreeze

Swimming World soaks up snippets from the realm of water sports around the world in a one-stop digest updated each day of every passing week.
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The Week of January 20-26, 2020

Tuesday, January 21
On the eve of a “swim where no human has swum before: 1km across a supra-glacial lake in East Antarctica” to highlight the approach to a cliff edge on climate-change, Lewis Pugh, the United Nations Patron of Oceans, has released magnificent images of him swimming in meltwater in an ice-tunnel under the Antarctic ice sheet.
The images – by Kelvin Trautman, a photographer & filmmaker who also described himself as “Outdoorsman & Athlete” – are spectacular, and mark the start of Pugh’s Antartica2020 mission, set back in 2016. Tomorrow brings on the East Antarctica leg of the campaign: the 1km across a supra-glacial lake with Slava Fetisov, as reported by Swimming World last month when Pugh ran an advert seeking polar swimmers to join him.
In a series of tweets, Pugh highlights the beauty and majesty of Antartica – and what the world is losing as the ice melts away at a rate never before measured in the lifetimes of those measuring. The swim by Pugh and Fetisov coincides with speeches from Greta Thunberg and Donald Trump at the Davos World Economic Forum.
Pugh writes:
“I can hardly believe what I have just experienced, swimming in a river UNDER the Antarctic ice sheet. Every shade of blue imaginable – it was utterly magnificent, and absolutely terrifying. Antarctica is melting. #Antarctica2020
East Antarctica is vast and beautiful, but everywhere we look there is meltwater. I will be swimming across one of these supra-glacial lakes to demonstrate the rapid changes taking place here, and to call for urgent action on climate change. #Antarctica2020

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