California woman braves shark-infested waters for 900-mile West Coast endurance swim — and survives

And you think you’ve got a long commute.

A brave Bay Area woman just swam the entirety of the California coastline to make a statement about the environment — braving the Pacific’s briny, shark-infested depths for 900 chilly miles.

Endurance swimmer Catherine Breed, 33, began her 111-day journey at the Oregon border near Crescent City on July 1 — winding up in San Diego yesterday afternoon.

Her goal was to be the first person in history to swim the entirety of the Golden State — and raise awareness for conservation efforts, she said.

Breed marked the end of her journey on a San Diego-area beach on Monday afternoon.

“For months, I measured my world in the next few miles,” Breed earlier told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Every message from someone following along, every person who came out to cheer, helped me get back in the water.”

Breed, who swam competitively at University of California, Berkeley, previously swam the English Channel in 2018 and the North Channel Crossing between Ireland and Scotland in 2019.

She was formerly a member of the U.S. National Team, before transitioning to open-water swimming.

Breed’s journey comes as the Pacific Ocean battles Super El Niño conditions, causing water temperature to rise, fueling powerful storms, raising sea levels, and disrupting the marine ecosystem.

The Cal grad told KPBS that navigating the tropical storms was the hardest part of her journey.

“California has a coastal current that typically runs north to south,” she said. “There’s historical data about that on NOAA. And this year, because of the ‘super’ El Niño, that current switched direction. And so the current is quite literally going against us the entire way.”

During her journey, Breed was in the water for about five hours per day, swimming an average of 10 to 15 miles at a time, according to a ABC7 report. She was joined by a 52-foot Beneteau sailboat and a support team along the way.

In an Instagram video posted Sunday, Breed said she wasn’t too worried about sharks.

“Everyone’s been so fixated on sharks,” Breed said. “We are so scared about these animals that live in the ocean and have no interest in us, and we are more fearful about that than we are about the damage and destruction that we are causing to our own home.”

Breed said that as she made her way down the coast, the waters became more polluted. The final miles of the coastline, at the Mexican border, were recently dubbed some of the most polluted in the country.

“As I’ve entered LA County and even as we’re swimming through Orange County, there are so many balloons in the water. In one day motoring out, we picked up about ten Mylar balloons, and that’s just in my swim route in about an hour,” she told KPBS.

“What I hope comes out of my swim is that the people in the community look to the groups, look to create their own group that are invested in cleaning up those waters and that they go forth and do that.”

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