Some of Christopher Swain’s earliest memories are of the Atlantic Ocean. He has long loved to swim, wade, snorkel, bodyboard and run in the waves. But as an adult, he’s swimming for a cause as often as he swims for pleasure. Swain swims the entire length of dirty waterways like the Hudson, the Charles and the Columbia Rivers to raise awareness about water issues on our planet.
And these are not pleasant, leisurely swims. He’s dodged injury and death many times in the process, surviving collisions with boats, 12-foot waves, lightning storms, class IV+ rapids, giant storage dams, industrial chemicals, nuclear waste, oil slicks, raw sewage, toxic blue-green algae, and repeated Sea Lamprey Eel attacks.
In 2003, Swain became the first person to swim the entire 1,243 mile length of the Columbia River. The purpose of the swim was to raise awareness about dislocated peoples and disrupted ecosystems of the Columbia River basin. His swim is the subject of the critically-acclaimed documentary SOURCE TO SEA: the Columbia River Swim, which received the Environmental Activism and Social Justice Award at the EarthVision Film Festival, and the Most Inspiring Adventure Film Award at the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival.
In April 2009, Swain began a 1000+ mile swim down the Atlantic Coast from Marblehead, Massachusetts to Washington, DC, helping students in over 2,000 classrooms launch projects designed to improve the health of our ocean planet. Swain is taking the swim one segment at a time, and you can follow his progress at Changents.com/ChristopherSwain.
Swain told The Sierra Club,
“If you’re in the business of conservation, you’ve got a responsibility to get outside. You’re not doing your job if you don’t. It’s not about e-mail blasts. It’s about what you can go out there and experience and come back and testify to. If you look at the people who’ve really done anything–John Muir, David Brower, Rachel Carson–you can feel it in their writing. Your credibility is going to come from your experience.”
Want to help Christopher on his journey? Adopt a mile of his swim.
Christopher Swain’s Green Score: 40,254
