On Monday 26 October I am swimming 16 kilometres from Durban to Umhlanga, to raise funds for SAAMBR.
The route has been swum before, but never with official ratification. This one is being documented and observed to recognised standards, which will make it the first officially ratified Durban to Umhlanga crossing on record. Tuesday 27th is held as a weather day. The ocean decides, as it always does.
Why SAAMBR
The South African Association for Marine Biological Research is a non-profit working in marine research, conservation and education. In seventy-five years they have reached more than two million learners and rescued and released over eight hundred sea turtles.
One of them is Finley, an adult female loggerhead who arrived at their turtle hospital critically ill and severely anaemic. Seven months of care followed, including a lifesaving blood transfusion. She went back into the ocean in July, and satellite tracking now follows her heading home towards Richards Bay.
Their Catchment to Coast programme does the other half of the work. It takes Grade 6 learners from the aquarium out to rocky shores and mangrove forests, then asks them to explain what they found to someone else. Children who arrive having never touched the sea leave able to teach it.
One swim, one cause, one industry
GoReefers are presenting the swim as part of their See It All campaign. For their clients, seeing it all means knowing where a shipment is at every stage of its journey. This year they decided it should mean looking past the shipment too - at the roads, the farms, the communities, and the ocean that connects so much of what the industry does.
They are committing R1,000 for every kilometre I swim, and challenging their customers, partners and the wider industry to match it.
An hour or two after I finish, conditions permitting, I will walk onto a stage and deliver The Art of Turning the Tide at their conference. The swim is not a warm-up for the talk. It is the talk, done in the water first.
Full details, and how to donate →
Bring Carina to your stage.