The Red Bulletin May 2020 (UK)

Ben Lecomte
“My generation is responsible
for this disaster, so I owe it
to myself to do something for
those who come after”
F or eight hours a day, across
338 nautical miles (626km), Ben Lecomte
is swimming through rubbish. And unlike
the marine life around him, this was his
choice. Lecomte is the first person to
brave the swirling vortex of subaqueous
debris that has become known as the
Great Pacific Garbage Patch – an area
more than six times the size of the UK,
located between California and Hawaii –
in an effort to conduct vital research and
to raise awareness. Lecomte isn’t a pro
swimmer or a scientist; he’s a French
architect and now naturalised US citizen
who has been living in Austin, Texas,
since 1993. The 52-year-old is married,
with two children at home. Yet here he is,
amid an unprecedented environmental
catastrophe. “My generation is responsible
for this disaster,” he says, simply, “so
I owe it to myself to do something for
those who come after.”
Lecomte nailed the first serious test of
his swimming ability back in 1998 when
he became the first man to swim the
Atlantic without a kick board, covering
the 5,980km from Cape Cod in the US to
Quiberon, France, in 73 days. Then, in
2018, he embarked on The Longest Swim,
an attempt to repeat this performance in
the Pacific, but this time across 9,100km.
Lecomte swam 2,700km before typhoon
winds damaged his assistance boat and
he had to give up. But witnessing the
huge rise in visible plastic waste helped
42 THE RED BULLETIN