Durban swimmer takes on the Elephant Coast in anti-plastic campaign

Posted on 21 December 2018

Sarah Ferguson, a physiotherapist and retired national swimmer from Durban, released a video of the first day of her swim from Mozambique to Sodwana Bay along the Elephant Coast back in July.

Image credit: Karl Oftebro/Breathe Ocean Conservation.

The Elephant Coast swim was a 100-kilometre swimming series that took place over six days. In a bid to to campaign against plastic pollution, Sarah Ferguson and her team took to the waters to raise awareness of the detriments of single-use plastic items to the ocean environment.

Ferguson is something of a pioneer as she was the first African woman to swim the Ka’iwi Channel crossing in Hawaii back in 2011, a 58-kilometre swim in what is known as the Valley of Bones, and in 2014 she was the first woman to swim the Umhlanga-Durban event.

Image: supplied/Breath Conservation.

Despite various accolades from her competitive swimming career, nowadays you’ll mostly find Ferguson swimming for her non-profit organisation, Breathe Ocean Conservation; together she and the team are committed to eliminating the use of throw-away plastics.

‘As I dived in there was actually a lot of microplastics, sadly, and I picked up a little piece that was glistening,’ says Ferguson in the video from Day 1. Fortunately the swimmer found some other mates in the waters along the way, encountering a manta ray and some dolphins too. Ferguson fared well for the duration of the swim, which was just about 16 km.

Check out the Breathe Ocean Conservation page on Facebook for more updates from Sarah’s Elephant Coast swim.

Also read: Cities and countries that have banned plastic

Featured images: Karl Oftebro/Breathe






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