Athlete, 55, Becomes First Person to Swim Around the Island of Martha’s Vineyard

Lewis Pugh, 55, thinks sharks get a bad rap.

So he set out to bring awareness to the predators’ plight by becoming the first person to swim around the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

The endurance athlete started his trek on May 15 and swam 60 miles (96 kilometers) in 12 days. Pugh said it was one of the most difficult endurance swims he’s completed in a career that spans almost 40 years.​​“It’s been a long journey, it really has — 12 days, cold water, constant wind, waves and then always thinking of what may be beneath me,” Pugh told PBS, noting that it’s shark migration season.

“It’s been a big swim. A very big swim. When you swim for 12 days, you leave as one person, and I think you come back as a different person with a new reflection on what you’ve been through.”​​Each day, while facing 47-degree water temperatures, Pugh swam in swim trunks, a swimming cap and goggles. Safety personnel followed him in a boat and a kayak to guide him.

His swim came just days after the first confirmed sighting of a white shark in Massachusetts waters this season.

​​“I was just getting really cold and swallowing a lot of seawater, not making headway, and then you’re constantly thinking, ‘Are we taking the right route here? Should we go further out to sea? Should we get closer in?’ ” Pugh said. “And meanwhile, you’re fighting currents.”​​

Endurance swimmer Lewis Pugh chats with visitors to Martha's Vineyard in Edgartown, Mass.

Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo

Pugh’s latest athletic feat wasn’t just about self-fulfillment. Pugh believes sharks have been portrayed as “cold-blooded killers” because of their depiction in the 1970s film Jaws.

The movie, directed by legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg, premiered in 1975 and is widely considered the first summer blockbuster.​​ “I think protecting sharks is the most important part of the jigsaw puzzle of protecting the oceans,” Pugh said. “Now we need to make peace with them.”​​

Pugh routinely participates in swimming events to raise awareness about environmental issues. He says he’s swum every ocean globally and was the first person to swim across the Red Sea in 2022 and the North Pole in 2007.​​Spielberg, 78, has expressed remorse over how sharks were portrayed in Jaws.

“That’s one of the things I still fear,” Spielberg told BBC Radio in 2022. “Not to get eaten by a shark, but that sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sport fishermen that happened after 1975, which — I truly, and to this day, regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film. I really, truly regret that.”​​

JAWS, 1975

Courtesy Everett Collection