Jono Ridler encounters a jellyfish during his swim down the east coast of the North Island. Photo / Joshua McCormack
Barbed wire jellyfish have not gotten on well with Jono Ridler.
Over the last week of his swim down the east coast of the North Island, the Kiwi ocean swimmer has had to add jellyfish stings to his list of hurdles, along with dropping sea temperatures and various niggles with his body.
Barbed wire jellyfish, also known as string jellyfish, are not what would come to mind for the layman when jellyfish are mentioned. They are, as the name suggests, a string made up of several stingers.
“They’re like a colony, very different-looking from what people would normally consider when they think about a jellyfish, with that round body and long tentacles. And I’ve had more encounters than I would have liked with these barbed wire jellyfish over the last five days or so,” Ridler tells the Herald.
But while the jellyfish have been stinging, Ridler has had other encounters with marine life that many could only dream of.
“There’s some recency bias in this, but the most enjoyable part of the most recent part of our trip has definitely been the dolphins,” he says.
“It’s just been amazing to be able to have those experiences, to be able to have them come right up and be very, very curious about what I’m doing and they’re jumping and they’ve got a lot of energy.
“I think it’s interesting, like people always mention their encounters with dolphins, there’s just something to it. It’s a connection with a very intelligent animal and you can sense their intelligence as you’re around them. They’re very special.”
Now more than 1100km into his world record-setting swim, Ridler has been on his journey for more than two months, hoping to bring the commercial fishing practice of bottom trawling into the spotlight and encourage the conversation on what more environmentally friendly alternatives could be explored.
It’s been demanding both mentally and physically and Ridler says he tries to take things as they come and, while in the water, spends a lot of time counting or singing to himself – Jack Johnson’s Banana Pancakes was a regular on the recent rotation.
“My physical state definitely plays a lot into how my mindset is on any given day, for better or for worse. But you know, things like fatigue, the jellyfish stings that I’ve encountered, sometimes the lack of sleep and recovery, the muscle soreness, all of that, it kind of compounds and makes things more difficult to manage from a mental perspective.
“And so for me, working through that, I’m trying to accept all of that, and of course the cold, I’m trying to accept all of those as factors that I can’t really control too much and focusing in on them isn’t actually helpful, and to instead just do what we need to do to keep moving forward and remind myself that whatever I’m going through in that moment, that it will pass, whatever kind of mental or physical anguish there may be in that moment, that it will end.”
The journey will end in the coming weeks in Wellington, with plans to deliver that message and a petition to Parliament. That petition currently has over 33,000 signatures.
Recently, Ridler’s efforts caught the attention of 11-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater, who shared it on social media.
“I did [see that]. Very cool. I messaged him as well and he was kind enough to message back and said it was an unbelievable effort and to watch out for the big toothy guys,” Ridler says of the American great.
“It’s cool, and hopefully we just get more of that international exposure as we get closer towards the end. I’ve always thought that there would be a big kind of build-up of interest in the final week or final two weeks. So I’m really curious to see how that pans out and then also how that obviously translates into, importantly, the signatures on the petition.
“Attention is fine, but if nothing comes of it then it’s kind of worthless at the end of the day. So it’s about channeling that towards one of our targets, which is really around getting as many voices as we can added to the petition. Having somebody high-profile like Kelly Slater and when we hit the 1000-kilometre mark, there were some really cool messages from people like Dan Carter and the like, they’re sharing it too.
“It’s definitely helping to get the word out and I think we will see some people jump on the bandwagon over the next week and a half, two weeks as we come to land this thing.”
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.