'A passion for the ocean'

World record swim highlights efforts to end seabed trawling

- Eva Corlett

First he hears a faint chatter coming from the ocean depths, then clicks and squeaks as the creatures draw closer. From the murky edges of his goggles they appear, swift and agile, darting within 10cm of his bare outstretched arms and following him, as he swims hundreds of metres off the coast of New Zealand.

Jono Ridler, an ultra-distance swimmer who is 1,254km (779 miles) into his attempt to break the world record for the longest unassisted staged swim, has learned to hear dolphins 15 minutes before they reach him and long before his support boats see them.

It is the type of knowledge of another species one can achieve only through spending hundreds of hours in their habitat. Ridler says he can now tell a small pod from a super pod at distance and can sense when they are about to reveal themselves.

"Then they are just rushing beneath me, huge amounts of energy," says the 36-year-old as he takes a break on the Wairarapa coast, three hours drive north of Wellington. "You can really sense their intelligence when you're in the water with them... there is a lot of value and connection that we can draw from the ocean." That connection, and Ridler's desire to raise awareness about the threats facing the ocean, has driven him to attempt this unprecedented feat of the longest-ever unassisted staged swim.