{"id":323397,"date":"2026-03-11T02:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T02:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/323397\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T02:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T02:05:09","slug":"ultra-swimmer-jono-ridler-comes-ashore-in-napier-as-end-to-epic-swim-draws-closer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/323397\/","title":{"rendered":"Ultra swimmer Jono Ridler comes ashore in Napier as end to epic swim draws closer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Swimming unassisted means Ridler wears togs rather than a wetsuit, but is permitted to wear earplugs, goggles and a swim cap. He is also followed by a support crew in two boats while swimming.<\/p>\n

Ridler is using his effort to draw attention to the effects of bottom trawling on sea life and the health of New Zealand\u2019s oceans in partnership with Blair Tuke and Peter Burling\u2019s Live Ocean charity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Ridler was looking likely to hit the 1000km mark between Mahia Peninsula and Cape Kidnappers, but negative currents stopped him at 996.5km.<\/p>\n

Ridler said it was a pretty unreal feeling to have nearly swum quadruple digits.<\/p>\n

For his swim in Hawke Bay, Ridler decided to sleep and eat on the open water, going directly from Mahia to Cape Kidnappers using only his support boat for rest \u2013 the first time he\u2019s had to do so on this trip.<\/p>\n

Doing this saved the crew a 40km transit getting to shore and back.<\/p>\n

Ridler said he had seen some amazing sea life while swimming in Hawke Bay.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the salp in the water is amazing, long chains that are all curled in on each other, kind of like a fern frond.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been probably the best water clarity, except for parts of the Far North, that we\u2019ve had the entire trip. It\u2019s been about 30 metres visibility. I\u2019ve just been able to see so, so far down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawke Bay\u2019s aquatic locals have been cheering on Ridler as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cOut here, there\u2019s so many dolphins and they\u2019re just coming up to me, swimming around me. It\u2019s very, very cool.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just want to see what\u2019s up, so they come up to me, they come up to the boat, it\u2019s like they just have a look and then they\u2019re on their way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Ridler hadn\u2019t come face to face with any sharks while in Hawke Bay, but he\u2019s had to deal with many jellyfish, particularly lion\u2019s mane jellyfish with \u201ctentacles five metres long\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re either hanging down, but sometimes they actually flip upside down and their tentacles hang up. So, I\u2019ve had a few lashes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Ridler said a few lashes are nothing compared to the damage bottom trawling is doing to New Zealand\u2019s oceans.<\/p>\n

\u201cBottom trawling on seamounts in particular is very, very damaging, destructive and indiscriminate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese deep-sea habitats, they can take centuries to be able to grow … and you trawl across them, it can take minutes, but it takes centuries to be able to recover.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our view, the equation is imbalanced and it\u2019s overly destructive for what we actually get out of it. We need to have more sustainable fishing methods in New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Live tracking of Ridler\u2019s swim can be found on the Live Ocean website.<\/p>\n

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Swimming unassisted means Ridler wears togs rather than a wetsuit, but is permitted to wear earplugs, goggles and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[806,58463,10001,8608,18983,8127,31125,78,111656,3607,111,139,69,111657,213,110848,54978,61,64520],"class_list":["post-323397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-as","tag-ashore","tag-closer","tag-comes","tag-draws","tag-end","tag-epic","tag-in","tag-jono","tag-napier","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ridler","tag-sports","tag-swim","tag-swimmer","tag-to","tag-ultra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323397","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=323397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}