Last night, I went for a night swim. I put on a second layer of wetsuit on my torso with a hoodie and slide into a dark world. It was surreal, all my usual reference points were distorted. I felt as if I was flying over my swim line, the space between me and the line was empty. The line started a plan about 6 feet below me where weird creatures gathered. Every time I lift up my head out off the water, I saw patches of water coming at me with nothing around them as Corbin and Josh shined their lights on different areas. We were hoping for squids to come up but that didn’t happen, maybe next time.
This morning, Adam took my daily vitals and body fat percentage. I have slipped pass the threshold of what is considered acceptable for body fat percentage. Lately I have been adding extra cans of fish preserved in oil to increase my fat intake.
Adam and drew were on the water with me, all day long I swam through areas filled with all kinds of plastic items, fragments and microplastics.
On our path we stopped twice to have a closer look at ghost nets. In one of them, few dead fish were caught in it but one was still alive. As I lifted up one section, a dead fish came loose and sank. When it reached about 20 feet down, a shark about 5 to 6 feet long snagged it and disappeared. It reappeared a couple of minutes later waiting for another dead fish to drop. It was very elusive and never came close enough, I couldn’t identify it with certainty.
This was my first encounter with a shark in this expedition. I resumed swimming in the plastic soup hoping for it to reappear later but he never did.
We were back on I Am Ocean, when a pod of about 15 Risso’s Dolphins appeared to our starboard side. We changed course and dropped the dinghy back in the water to approach them. Adam flew the drone over from the dinghy and captured this amazing footage of dolphins, some were grey other white, gliding through the water with our sailboat in the background.
This amazing display of wild life took place again in the most concentrated area with microplastic.
33º49 N / 145º16 W
Ben
Follow our progress with our live tracker
More updates on instagram, facebook and twitter
Photo credits @osleston
