Environment

N.L. man to swim Great Barrier Reef for climate change

by Amy Judd | January 15, 2009 at 03:16 pm

194 views | 14 Recommendations | 4 comments

A Canadian man living in New Zealand has decided that he is going to swim the entire lenght of the Great Barrier Reef from within a solar-powered shark cage to raise awareness for climate change.

Rob Hutchings, a native of Corner Brook, N.L. who now lives in Adelaide, Australia, hopes his 2,300-kilometre quest will raise awareness of global warming and the threat it poses to the reef.

"I'm a regular guy with slightly irregular ideas about how to enjoy myself," the 33-year-old chiropractor told CTV.ca from his home.

The swim, which Hutchings hopes to begin on Nov. 1, 2009, will be akin to making 90 crossings of the English Channel, or swimming from the Canada-U.S. border to Miami, Fla.

"The whole idea is to call attention to the fact the reef is going extinct from CO2 emissions," Hutchings said.

The reef is fragile and can be affected by climate change, and is vulnerable to changes in water temperature and sea life.

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Paschen

at 16:42 on January 15th, 2009

Good luck. Hope he does well. The Reef is worth every effort that may help.

shekgraham@hotmail.com

at 18:13 on January 15th, 2009

I've dived all over the world and yet the Great Barrier Reef still remains in my humble opinion, the foremost place to dive. The further you can get from the cities along the coast, the better the diving gets. If you've got the time, go out on a live-aboard dive boat to see the best.

We need to preserve the reef. Run-off and damage from fishing and poorly supervised snorkelers and divers damage the reef and are things we can remedy relatively easily. Global warming - that's a bigger problem!

shekgraham@hotmail.com has contributed a photo to this story.

Amy Judd

at 18:19 on January 15th, 2009

Thanks for your first hand perspective!

John W. Schell (not verified)

at 10:36 on January 16th, 2009

This is a great event that should make an important contribution to world awareness with regards to the health of the oceans. The Great Barrier reef appears to be in relatively good health with compared to the reefs in the Gulf of Mexico. Recently, my wife and I snorkeled on the reefs off the coast of Cozumel, Mexico. They are gray and obviously bleached when compared to our experiences on the Great Barrier Reefs. With this in mind, it is critically important to preserve these Barrier Reefs.

Every summer I teach a class on situated learning for teachers. We work in cooperation with the Ocean Alliance and our teachers work as naturalists on whale watching boats. We believe that teachers of any discipline are well positions to educate students and their families about the threat to our environment.