First person to swim beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet

Open-water endurance swimmer Lewis Pugh (UK) became the first person to venture into meltwater beneath the ice sheet of Antarctica on 23 January 2020. Wearing nothing but swimming trunks, cap and goggles, Pugh swam approximately 1 kilometre (0.62 miles) down what is known as a “subglacial river” located near the Russian Novolazarevskaya research station in East Antarctica, in water that was as cold as 0.1 degrees Celsius (32.18 degrees Fahrenheit). The swim, which included passing through a glacial tunnel with ice stalactites and terminated in a “supraglacial river” (i.e., on top of the glacier), lasted for 10 minutes 17 seconds in all.

Pugh initially set out to swim across one of East Antarctica’s supraglacial lakes – pools of meltwater that form on the surface of the ice sheet that are appearing ever-more frequently during the summer months. However, owing to the extreme wind-chill factor, the decision was made by Pugh and his team to conduct the swim down the slightly more sheltered subglacial river, which did by the end emerge on to the top of the ice sheet. In any case, the purpose of the swim was to draw attention to the impact that global warming is having on the frozen continent.

In terms of coordinates, the start point of the swim was 70.751°S, 11.736° E; the end point was 70.752° S, 11.731° E.

Boundary-pushing Pugh also holds records for the first long-distance swim at the North Pole, a 1-km (0.62-mi) swim completed in 2007, and first swim of the length of the English Channel, set between 12 July and 29 August 2018.

A long-time campaigner for Earth’s oceans and against climate change, the United Nations appointed Pugh their first “Patron of the Oceans” in 2013. He played a pivotal role in securing the Ross Sea Region Marine Protected Area, one of the largest marine reserves on the planet, which was established in 2016.

Photo credit: Kelvin Trautman