Latest / Best of: Features / Catherine Breed completes 900-mile swim as first to swim California's entire coast

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Catherine Breed completes 900-mile swim as first to swim California's entire coast · Best of: Features

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  Catherine Breed, completes 900-mile swim as first To swim California's entire coast.
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  Written by Hearst Television. This article is being read by an automated
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  voice generated by Everlet. Catherine Breed, Mill Valley, Caliph resident, has
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  finished her roughly nine hundred mile swim of California's entire coast. To
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  achieve this unprecedented feat, the thirty three year old swam through open
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  water for about five to eight hours per day and faced an
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  unexpected foe. Related video shows Catherine when she reached the Monterey Bay
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  and spoke with KSBW 8. Since starting at the Oregon border in
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  July, Breed experienced this year's historic El Nino changing the Pacific Ocean
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  in real time. She shared what she witnessed and how El Niño
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  complicated her team's journey with SF Gate on Saturday afternoon, two days
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  before her ceremonial finish. In this conversation, Breed voiced concern about a
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  surprising current, which seemingly flowed north as she attempted to travel south.
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  Josh Willis, a senior research scientist for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told
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  SF Gate that El Niño has not changed the far offshore California
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  current, which flows north to south, but he had another theory. Near
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  shore there is a small coastal jet that also goes from north
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  to south most summers, driven really by the upwelling and the winds
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  near shore, Willis wrote via email. But during an El Nino year,
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  those upwelling winds tend to reverse and the coastal jet can stop
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  or reverse as well. This is probably what Catherine was experiencing. This
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  interview was edited for length and clarity. SF Gate, what happened on
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  your swim today? Catherine Breed. I swam from Point Loma to Mission
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  Bay, which was about eight miles. When we were coming back into
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  the San Diego Harbor, there was so much trash, like more than
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  I've seen the entire trip. There were a lot of plastic bags.
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  Breed. The Tijuana River is a global, national, and California crisis. Essentially,
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  raw sewage comes out of the river and spills into the ocean.
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  The pollution zone is about 1.5 miles offshore, so I'll be finishing
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  around three miles offshore, crossing the border at sea. That's why no
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  one's gonna see me finish. The strategy for avoiding the pollution crisis
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  is to done. Avoid, and two, I've started taking prophylactic antibiotics at
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  the guidance of my medical team. Thank goodness it's at the end.
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  SFgate how are your feeling so close to the end? Breed. Physically
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  and emotionally I feel great. We had a really fun day in
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  the ocean today. My body's holding up great. I think mentally I
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  am ready to be done. I'm ready to be home. I'm a
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  little overwhelmed at some of the attention that's going to come from
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  the finish. SF Gate, what should Californians know about your conservation underwater?
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  Breed, I want to underscore how challenging this was during the Super
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  El
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  Niño I picked this year since 2023, and I had no crystal
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  ball saying it would be a Super El Nino. It really forced
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  us to work with Mother Nature every single day. It proved extremely
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  challenging for the swim. My message to people would be to get
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  involved in local ocean conservation to understand what's happening in your backyard.
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  I do believe that this year is an alarm for us. SF
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  Gate, what signs of El Nino did you notice? Breed, we've definitely
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  been feeling The
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  warmer water. We started noticing that all the way up in San
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  Francisco, where it was warmer than it typically has been in other
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  years, the fact that there was so much activity in the form
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  of hurricanes and tropical storms in the Pacific was also very noticeable.
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  We were in Hurricane Rachel, and we definitely got swell swell from
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  the other storms. Having a lot of big swell from the west
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  or the south made it difficult to anchor at times. The other
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  thing we've noticed is the shifting current. It seems to be going
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  in the opposite direction than it typically does, but I need to
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  do some research on that. The current plus They hurricanes and tropical
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  storms meant that I had to reverse direction sometimes. Instead of all
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  my swimming north to south, I did some segments where I swam
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  s south to north. That doubles our time in the ocean. It
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  doubles transit time, it forces us to really think about our day
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  in a very strategic way. SF Gate what kinds of marine life
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  did you see? Breed. We saw a lot of manta rays, which
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  I thought was pretty unique. We saw them as far north as
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  Malibu. They are a tropical species, so having them this far up
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  north was interesting. We definitely saw tuna and marlin. We also saw
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  many sea lions affected by Demoic acid in Monterey. And there were
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  lots and lots and lots of whales in the hundreds. I had
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  a whale swim underneath me in Humboldt County, And the I had
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  dolphins swim right near me in mendocinos. Bottlenose dolphins in Santa Barbara
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  played with me for like ten minutes, which was so amazing. Up
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  around Moro Bay on the central coast, a baby humpback and a
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  mother humpback swam within like fifteen to twenty feet of me, and
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  that was probably the coolest experience of my life. We were s
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  seeing like ten to twenty whales per day, and then all of
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  a sudden in the Santa Barbara area we didn't see any whales
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  anymore. That could also be because it was warm, SF Gate. And
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  then shark sightings? Breed. They're pretty uneventful. The crew is always looking
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  out and I'm swimming very close to the boat. If the crew
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  sees a fin they just tell me, Cat shark, I hop out
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  within about five seconds. If we see it again we evaluated whether
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  we should get back in the water or just be done for
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  the day. One day we did make the call to be done,
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  but most of the time I resume my swim and that's that's
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  it. SF Gate after this incredible accomplishment what's next for you? Breed,
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  I'm going to a wedding in Central America, so I'm gonna go
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  enjoy a little vacation, and then I will really just focus on
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  my next step in life professionally. I wanna see how I can
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  use this swim to share a story that inspires not only ocean
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  conservation but also more people to go after big goals and push
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  themselves.