Ben Lecomte, born in France and now living in Texas, has begun a swim estimated at 5,500 miles. He hopes to bring attention to pollution from plastics.
A 51-year-old French-born adventurer began an attempt to swim across the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, saying his endurance odyssey is also intended to focus world attention on environmental challenges, like the plastics that are contaminating the world’s oceans.
Benôit “Ben” Lecomte entered the water in Choshi, Japan, aiming to reach San Francisco about six months from now, after a swim estimated at 5,500 miles.
Lecomte said he is undertaking the expedition as a kind of existential challenge and to help publicize threats like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — the vast expanse of man-made pollution that fouls that ocean. A website for the journey called the Longest Swim promises groundbreaking studies into the health of phytoplankton, the impact of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear accident, and the results of sea life making a home on plastic debris.
“The ocean is in peril right now,” Lecomte said in a statement before starting the swim. “It has never been done, to collect data from one end of the ocean to the other…. I have been dreaming, eating, sleeping that idea. Now it’s reality.”
Lecomte plans to swim eight hours a day and to rest on his support craft, the 67-foot sailing yacht Discoverer. He is wearing a wetsuit, snorkel, fins and a shark-repelling bracelet. His support crew will be monitoring his physical and psychological well-being, another part of the expedition’s research.
Lecomte would be the first to complete the Pacific crossing, though it is not his first transoceanic endurance test.
