Whanganui doctor Athol Steward and his son Lloyd yesterday completed the last leg of their three-stage swim for the ocean - swimming 23km from Patea River to Whanganui in around eight hours, to raise money to defend the South Taranaki Bight from seabed mining.

This is the third big swim in the last three weeks for Athol, a doctor in the Hawera Emergency Department in Taranaki. On his first two swims, one six kilometres and one seven, he marked out an “X” over the proposed seabed mining site in the South Taranaki Bight.

“What struck me was the absolute abundance of life out there in the bight - in an area that the seabed mining company consistently tells us is devoid of life,” he said. “We were so far out, but it was brimming with life. I was thinking the whole time about what it would be like if a seabed mining company was digging up 50 million tonnes of this seabed a year and dumping most of it back. A huge open cast seabed mine is not ok, not here, not anywhere.”

“It was a pristine environment - the way nature intended it. It was magical, the water quality was unbelievable: so clear and so clean. We saw seabirds, fish and plankton. And as we marked out the very final part of the X, a pod of dolphins did a victory loop around us - it was uncanny, almost like they knew what we were doing.”

Yesterday’s swim went well, with the currents in their favour most of the way, but it got pretty rough for the last few kilometres. “We were almost at a standstill,” he said. “But we made it. I now know what it’s like to spend eight hours in the water - it was pretty hard going towards the end.”

Athol’s first swim was on the morning of 16 March. He had been so busy getting ready for the swim he hadn’t realised the extent of the tragedy in Christchurch the day before.

“It really struck home for me when I got back and found that one of the doctors in our department - originally from Palestine - was killed in the mosque that day. He lived in Christchurch and came up to work with us in Hawera every three weeks. It made me even more determined to finish these swims, even though the whole country focus was on Christchurch. It’s about preserving something before it’s destroyed.”

The money Athol raises will go toward Kiwis Against Seabed Mining’s defence of the High Court decision that quashed Trans Tasman Resources Ltd’s approval to mine a 66 sq km section of the South Taranaki Bight seabed. The Court of Appeal has yet to set the date for the hearing.

“Athol’s dedication to stopping seabed mining represents the kind of passion about this issue that we see from so many people across Aotearoa,” said Cindy Baxter, KASM Chairperson. “Last year he walked from Raglan to Whanganui, and this year he’s swum huge distances for this cause. It’s people like Athol and his family who keep us going.”

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