Lewis Pugh Make Cold-Water Swim Across North Pole to Highlight Climate Change

In July 2007, Lewis Pugh made an one kilometer swim across the geographic North Pole of the world. Swim across the North Pole? Isn't the North Pole frozen over with ice? You would think so. But due to climate changes, the arctic ice is disappearing and there are clearly lots of open waters in large cracks in the ice. An ice breaker ship can sail right up to the North Pole.

In fact, some estimates are that the Arctic ice may disappear completely in the year 2050 if we continue on our current course.^[ref] The main reason for Lewis's swim was to highlight the devastating effects of climate change.

See part of Pugh's swim in this video. In the video, you also will see a beautiful mother polar bear and her cub in their native environment. When Arctic ice disappear, species like the polar bear and the bowhead whale will go extinct.

Lewis talks more about the swim in the TED talk linked here that he gave in September 2009. He spent a year training for the swim. As you saw in the video, it takes a team of people to pull off the endeavor. Lewis swam for 18 minutes and 50 seconds in freezing waters of temperatures ranging from minus 1.7 to 0 degrees Celsius. This is literally freezing cold because fresh water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius. Although Lewis had swam in the Thames river and in all five oceans of the world [ref], the North Pole swim was his most difficult to date. It took four months for him to feel his fingers again. But he said it was all worth it.

Here is another video of him and his north pole swim.