Swimmer circumnavigates Martha’s Vineyard ahead of ‘Jaws’ 50th anniversary

VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. — A British-South African endurance athlete became the first person to swim around the island of Martha’s Vineyard on Monday, completing a 60-mile (97-kilometer) trek over multiple days to raise awareness about the plight of sharks as the film “Jaws” nears its 50th birthday.

Lewis Pugh, 55, began swimming multiple hours a day in the 47-degree (8 degrees Celsius) water on May 15. He wants to change public perceptions and encourage protections for the at-risk animals — which he said the film maligned as “villains, as cold-blooded killers.”

“We’ve been fighting sharks for 50 years,” he said after completing the last 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) of the swim before exiting the ocean at the Edgartown Harbor Lighthouse, near where “Jaws” was filmed. “Now, we need to make peace with them.”

In total, Pugh swam for about 24 hours over 12 days. His first stop in Edgartown after greeting cheering fans on the beach was at an ice cream shop, where he enjoyed a cone of salted caramel and berry brownie.

Rough waters made a cold swim harder

Pugh said this was among his most difficult endurance swims in an almost 40-year career, which says a lot for someone who has swum near glaciers and volcanoes, and among hippos, crocodiles and polar bears. Pugh was the first athlete to swim across the North Pole and complete a long-distance swim in every one of the world’s oceans.

He said he expected the swim to be difficult because of the water temperature, the distance and the fact that it was happening during the start of shark migration season. But the weather proved the most challenging element of all.

“It’s been a long journey, it really has — 12 days, cold water, constant wind, waves, and then always thinking of what may be beneath me. It’s been a big swim. A very big swim,” he said. “When you swim for 12 days, you leave as one person and I think you come back as a different person with a new reflection on what you’ve been through.”

Day after day, Pugh entered the island’s frigid waters wearing just trunks, a cap and goggles, enduring foul weather as a nor’easter dumped 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain on parts of New England and flooded streets on Martha’s Vineyard.

Some days, he was only able to make it a little over half a mile (1 kilometer) before wind and waves made it impossible to see beyond an arm’s length ahead. In some cases, he had to make up lost distance by swimming multiple legs in a day.

“I was just getting really cold and swallowing a lot of sea water, not making headway and then you’re constantly thinking, ‘Are we taking the right route here? Should we go further out to sea? Should we get closer in?'” he said. “And meanwhile you’re fighting currents.”

Endurance swimmer’s latest feat is meant to help protect sharks

But Pugh — who has been named a United Nations Patron of the Oceans and often swims to raise awareness for environmental causes — said no swim is without risk, and that drastic measures are needed to get his message across: About 274,000 sharks are killed globally each day, a rate of nearly 100 million every year, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

On Monday, Pugh called the decimation of sharks an “ecocide.”

“I think protecting sharks is the most important part of the jigsaw puzzle of protecting the oceans,” he said.

“Jaws,” which was filmed in Edgartown, and called Amity Island for the movie, created Hollywood’s blockbuster culture when it was released in summer 1975, setting new box office records and earning three Academy Awards. The movie would shape views of the ocean for decades to come.

Both director Steven Spielberg and author Peter Benchley expressed regret that viewers of the film became so afraid of sharks, and both later contributed to conservation efforts as their populations declined, largely due to commercial fishing.

Pugh’s endeavor also coincided with the New England Aquarium’s first confirmed sighting this season of a white shark, off the nearby island of Nantucket. As a precaution, Pugh was accompanied on his swim by safety personnel in a boat and a kayak, whose paddler is using a “Shark Shield” device to create a low-intensity electric field in the water to deter sharks without harming them.

There were no shark sightings along Pugh’s journey, but he said he saw sun fish, seals and terns.

He now plans to travel to New York for a few days to do interviews about the swim and discuss shark conservation before returning to his home of Plymouth, England.

“Now the real hard work starts, which is getting this message to policy makers,” Pugh said.

___ This story corrects Pugh’s swimming distance to roughly 60 miles, rather than 62, based on updated calculations from his team. ___

See an AP photo gallery from around Martha’s Vineyard and the start of Pugh’s swim here.