{"id":447500,"date":"2026-05-18T10:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T10:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/447500\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T10:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T10:31:10","slug":"a-crocodile-crushed-his-only-functional-arm-he-returned-to-the-to-water-to-fight-plastic-pollution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/447500\/","title":{"rendered":"A crocodile crushed his only functional arm. He returned to the to water to fight plastic pollution"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex\u2019s Perpetual Planet Initiative<\/a> has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.\n<\/p>\n

\n The water was calm that morning in the Okavango Delta, in Botswana. Belgian diver Alain Brandeleer remembers the visibility was good and that he felt no particular unease. He had spent much of his life seeking ever more extreme experiences in the water, swimming with sharks in different parts of the world \u2014 even with great whites, without a cage. Over time, the constant exposure to risk had stopped giving him an adrenaline rush. And when that happens, he said, a question appears that\u2019s hard to ignore: what comes next?\n <\/p>\n

\n That day, September 6, 2012, the answer was brutal. The water turned cloudy and thick. Visibility disappeared in a matter of seconds. He felt something brush against his legs, but didn\u2019t fully register what it was at first. Then he understood. The body of a crocodile was wrapped around him, and it was biting his right arm.\n <\/p>\n

\n One of his companions managed to hold him by the oxygen tank for more than a minute. Brandeleer would later say that saved his life.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf he had let go for a second, I was dead,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n After the attack came the wait. Hours passed before medics could attend to him, get him onto a helicopter and transfer him to a hospital in Johannesburg. During that time he didn\u2019t even know for certain whether he still had his arm.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI could feel the arm, but I didn\u2019t know if it was there or not,\u201d he recalled. The wetsuit was holding it in place.\n <\/p>\n

\n When the doctors assessed Brandeleer they decided the arm had to be amputated.\n <\/p>\n

\n It was a devastating blow. Brandeleer was born with an atrophy of his left hand. From a young age he had learned to live with that physical difference and to resist it defining him. The arm that had just been destroyed was his only fully functional one.\n <\/p>\n

\n Over the years, water became the place where he could prove himself. First as a diver, then as a long-distance swimmer, he found in the sea a form of freedom. In the water he managed to push his own limits and realize that, in his case, those limits were often more mental than physical.\n <\/p>\n

\n That\u2019s why, when the doctors raised the option of amputation, his response was immediate. He recalls telling the doctor, with a calm that still surprises him today, that if that was the only option, he would rather not wake up from the anaesthesia.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n Along with his quality of life, he was concerned about becoming a burden. For years he had supported his father \u2014 emotionally and financially \u2014 at a time when his health had deteriorated badly. That experience left a mark on him. \u201cI promised myself I would never put my son in that situation,\u201d he explained.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trying to save the arm carried a very high probability of death by infection but faced with Brandeleer\u2019s stubbornness, surgeons decided to try.\n <\/p>\n

\n He survived, but his recovery was not straightforward. There were surgeries, complications and infections that tested his physical and mental resilience.\n <\/p>\n

\n But six months after the attack, he went back into the water.\n <\/p>\n

\n He started with basic, almost exploratory movements, accompanied by a physiotherapist, as part of his rehabilitation. More than a sporting goal, it was a way of recovering a relationship with his own body.\n <\/p>\n

\n Over time, he began to train several times a day. He adjusted movements. He tried, got frustrated, then tried again. Then, he told his physiotherapist he wanted to swim the English Channel. He didn\u2019t do it, but the idea marked a shift. A year later, after several setbacks \u2014 including another injury and an infection \u2014 he set a goal to swim the Strait of Gibraltar.\n <\/p>\n

\n He crossed the 8-mile passage in 2015, three years after the attack.\n <\/p>\n

\n He didn\u2019t stop there, swimming between Corsica and Sardinia in 2023. Each swim, he said, was a way to come to terms with what had happened to him.\n <\/p>\n

\n In parallel, the sea began to occupy another place in his life. On his trips through the Red Sea, the Mediterranean and other remote spots, Brandeleer began to notice that even in places that seemed pristine at first, plastic waste piled up on beaches, floated in the water and mixed with the wildlife.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou arrive at a place that looks like paradise, you walk a few meters, and it\u2019s full of plastic,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n The image of turtles mistaking bags for jellyfish stayed with him. So did the contrast between dive sites he had known decades earlier, full of color and life, and their current state, degraded and polluted. That change shook him. It convinced him that those wonders could be lost in a single generation.\n <\/p>\n

\n It was Brandeleer\u2019s son who told him about The Ocean Cleanup<\/a>, an organization that intercepts plastic before it reaches the ocean.\n <\/p>\n

\n He decided to start with something simple: swimming to raise funds.\n <\/p>\n

\"Brandeleer<\/p>\n

\n In 2025, Brandeleer swam between the Spanish islands of Ibiza and Formentera, a journey of about 23 kilometers in open water. The initiative raised around 24,000 euros ($28,000) \u2014 roughly the cost of intercepting 500,000 plastic bottles before they reached the ocean. Beyond the figure, what interested him was the idea that one person\u2019s small action could have a measurable impact.\n <\/p>\n

\n Brandeleer wanted to inspire others and show the possibilities of collective action.\n <\/p>\n

\n His \u201cRunning for the Ocean\u201d initiative takes the same idea to dry land. It\u2019s a 20-kilometer (12.4 mile) race in Brussels, with more than 250 participants raising funds to help intercept 1 million plastic bottles. It\u2019s not about performance, but about participation \u2014 and, above all, replicability. The intention is for the model to be transferable to other cities and grow internationally.\n <\/p>\n

\n Today, more than a decade after the attack, the pain is still there. Not constantly, but enough to remind Brandeleer that his body will never be the same. For a while, he tried to resist it, avoid it, ignore it. With time, he changed the way he related to the sensation.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf you see it as an enemy, it always wins,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n He prefers to think of it as part of his life, something he coexists with. In the same way he lives with the memory of the accident, with the story of having been born with an atrophied hand, and with the certainty that much of his character was formed around that difference.\n <\/p>\n

\n When he talks about everything that came afterwards, he doesn\u2019t frame it as a comeback story. There is no clear moment when everything gets better. Rather, he describes a series of transformations \u2014 some sought, others not \u2014 that gradually gave shape to something different. He talks about his father. About his son. About the children born with physical differences whom he also wants to reach when he swims. \u201cI want to show them that with passion and perseverance, you can achieve the unthinkable,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Thirteen years ago, in the murky waters of Botswana, Alain Brandeleer lost control of his body inside the jaws of a crocodile.\n <\/p>\n

\n Today, when he goes into the sea, it\u2019s different. His movement is more conscious, more measured. There is no longer any need to try anything. What there is, instead, is a different way of being there: the conviction that even a life marked from birth by difference, shaped by pain and fear, can still push for something larger than itself.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":["post-447500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}