Ridler and his team<\/a> had was that they would encounter some of the many creatures living in the ocean along the way. <\/p>\nSo far, that has included jellyfish, turtles, whales, penguins, schools of fish, dolphins and, at one point, a shark swimming right alongside him. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, I haven\u2019t had a lot of experience around sharks. And if you talk to people that have spent a lot of time around sharks, they have a different relationship with somebody who hasn\u2019t and might have only seen the movie Jaws or something like that, right? <\/p>\n
\u201cBut I guess I\u2019ve had enough encounters now that I\u2019m a bit more comfortable with them. I\u2019m not completely comfortable and that\u2019s really just an exposure thing. It\u2019s just time knowing how they behave. Like any animal, they have predictable behaviours, and it\u2019s knowing what those look like.\u201d <\/p>\n
As Ridler has travelled further down the county, he has noticed his environment going from being \u201cquite alive\u201d as it was in the Far North, to seeing \u201ca lot of evidence of life\u201d but not having as many actual encounters. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s kind of, I guess, indicative of fishing pressure as much as anything else as we\u2019ve gone down the coast.\u201d <\/p>\n
It\u2019s that issue at the heart of Ridler\u2019s decision to take on this challenge in the first place. <\/p>\n
![\"Jono]()
Jono Ridler has a small support team with him as he attempts a 1609km ocean swim. Photo \/ Joshua McCormack, Live Ocean<\/p>\n
Teaming up with Live Ocean, Ridler hoped to bring the commercial fishing practice of bottom trawling into the spotlight and encourage the conversation on what more environmentally friendly alternatives could be explored. <\/p>\n
Bottom trawling is a practice where heavy nets are dragged along the sea floor to catch large quantities. It is a practice that has a destructive impact on the sea floor environment, while bycatch \u2013 non-target species caught in the nets \u2013 is also a concern. Bycatch is often dumped back into the ocean whether it\u2019s dead or alive after being sorted. <\/p>\n
Ridler had been well supported in his swim so far, noting he has had people in their boats to share their support and jump in for a swim alongside him, though there were safety protocols and other rules in place Ridler had to adhere to for his world record attempt. <\/p>\n
He also targeted seven local stopping points for activations where he can meet people and share his message, with the next being scheduled at Mt Maunganui on Thursday afternoon. These activations generally come at the conclusion of one of Ridler\u2019s swim legs. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very energising to be involved with those and it\u2019s really one of the goals of this project, this mission, is to engage people and as the word kind of suggests, activate them so they can kind of be advocates, they can go out and spread the word in their communities,\u201d Ridler said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a super important part of it and most of the time I feel quite energised. After the Auckland one, if you saw me walking around, I was a bit of a zombie because it finally hit after the event, but during the event it was great.\u201d <\/p>\n
Setting out from North Cape on January 5, Ridler had anticipated the swim would take him roughly 90 days to complete. Initially expected to be a 1609km swim, he has adjusted his route to one that optimises his progress and prioritises the goal of getting to Wellington, instead of hugging the coastline where possible as originally planned. That has seen the estimated distance drop to around 1350km. <\/p>\n
While poor weather had set that back early in the journey, he said the 90-day window was still looking good. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of the total distance covered to this point, we\u2019re slightly behind, but ever so slightly and we\u2019ve been catching up with every day basically because we\u2019ve been covering additional mileage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe recent weekly mileage has definitely been hopping up and based on our current trajectory, we\u2019re set to finish within that 90-day time period that we had put out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christopher Reive<\/a> joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAt the moment, I\u2019ve got an ulcer in my cheek wall and one on my lip and that\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[151549,95,11586,20388,6097,3806,33527,28161,2082,78,104,2514,111656,111,139,529,69,11599,34293,111657,147,7971,110848,223,406],"class_list":["post-265797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-1350km","tag-and","tag-coast","tag-connection","tag-down","tag-east","tag-encounters","tag-expectations","tag-for","tag-in","tag-injuries","tag-island","tag-jono","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-ocean","tag-preparing","tag-ridler","tag-science","tag-shark","tag-swim","tag-the","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}