Building mental resilience while fighting for the oceans

Good morning! I would like to welcome everyone to "HR on Wings" podcast. My guest today is Lewis Gordon Pugh.

Professionally, Lewis is a lawyer and adjunct professor of International Law at the University of Cape Town, a Cambridge University graduate, and an inspirational keynote speaker. On top of that, Louis is a man who completed a long distance swim in every ocean in the world, including the Arctic and Seven seas. His first swim was across the North Pole in 2007, then in the Antarctic, across glacial lake of Mount Everest and even under the Antarctic ice sheet. Lewis was also the first person to cover the length of the English Channel, which is 528 km long, and he achieved that in 49 days. But he hasn't swung through the Baltic Sea yet, so maybe that will be the next challenge. Hello, Lewis!

Thank you so much for having me on your podcast.

Thank you for accepting my invitation. I think that the most beautiful and amazing thing in your life story is the WHY? I mean, why you are doing what you are doing, and this WHY is to save the oceans. You are an ocean advocate and a fighter for nature since 1986. Your goal is to build awareness about climate change and to make world leaders and all humans act against it. How did your journey start? I mean, was there any specific moment when you thought "I want to do this. I just got to go there, to the North Pole!"

I think my WHY is very simple. It's justice. It's justice between ourselves and the animal kingdom. I've been swimming now for 35 years, and in 35 years, I've seen our oceans change. I've seen it change very quickly. 35 years is obviously a long time in a human lifetime, but in terms of the history of the planet, there's nothing. And I've seen the oceans change. And for me, I'm fighting to try and protect our oceans in order that the incredible wildlife that lives in our oceans, have a future, but not justice between ourselves and the animal kingdom. Also justice between ourselves and our future generations, our children, and our grandchildren. I think there's something very wrong about us damaging the environment and then our children simply don't have a future.

I agree. But was there anyone who inspired you to do that?

Oh, lots of people. Yes, I mean, I grew up initially in South Africa. It was at a time when apartheid was a governing system in South Africa. I was at the University of Cape Town studying law. Some of my lecturers were arrested, and some of my fellow students were arrested, and they were just fighting for a very simple thing, for justice, for equality, for freedom. And so that was the basis. It was an awakening for me. Would you ask, was there a specific moment when I realized, Lewis, you have to be an ocean advocate, you have to stand up and protect the oceans and I would answer that honestly, and it wasn't, it was a slow awakening.

Every single year, I saw the oceans change a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. But then there was one big swim, which I did down in Antarctica. And I was doing the swim in a place called Deception Island. Anyway, the swim was in front of where there had been a whaling station, where many years ago, I remember diving into the sea, and then underneath me were literally thousands and thousands of whale bones, jawbones, spine bones, ribbons. And some of them were piled up so high from the bottom of the ocean in my hands, touched them. About 100 years ago, this place was a big whaling station. The whalers, they killed the whales, they dragged them up onto the beach and then they melted them down for oil, for the industrial age. And then they just threw the bones back in the sea. I like to think that those whales are a reminder of our potential for folly. And the reason for that is because we nearly pushed whales right into extinction. But we haven't learnt anything. First we came for the whales and took them, and then we came for the seals and then took all of them.

And now we're going for the there's a type of fish down there which is very profitable, called the Antarctic toothfish. We're taking them. Even fishing down in Antarctica, there's a tiny, tiny shrimp like thing called krill on which every single thing in Antarctica relies. So we just haven't learnt our lesson. So that's the work which I do now, just trying to be a voice for our oceans and all the magnificent wildlife in our oceans.

But how do you perceive the situation in the global waters? I mean, what do you witness while you swim in the oceans and seas? What do you see?

Well, I see less and less fish. I did a series of swims in the seven seas of the world, and one of the seven seas is the Mediterranean. I remember doing a swim there, and it was a long swim. And during that swim, I didn't see any fish oh, gosh. Bigger than my hand. And I grew up in South Africa, but I also spent a little bit of time when I was a little boy living in Malta, which is an island in the Mediterranean. And I remember as a young boy standing on the shoreline there, fishing boats would come in and it had huge, great tuna and swordfish and big fish like this gone. It's happened in my lifetime. I did a swim a few years ago, the length of the English Channel. You mentioned it in your introduction. It took me 49 days. I swam the whole length of the English Channel. And during that swim, I saw a few birds, I saw a few dolphins, I saw one turtle and nothing else in 49 days. We've completely overfished our oceans. Completely overfished our oceans.

It sounds really horrible.

Yes. And the only solution to this is to create these great big, large marine protected areas. These are like big national parks. It's a race against time now to create these big national parks in our oceans, like we've done on land. Like, imagine if we didn't have national parks on land. The land would be very different.

I've had the privilege of going to some of the big national parks in Africa and in America. When you drive into Yellowstone and you see all these enormous just the beauty and diversity and the wildlife, it's amazing. But none of that would have happened unless we had created those great big national parks about 150 years ago was when they started. We now need to do exactly the same in our oceans.

What does the alerting situation with global waters means to the future of our planet and to the future of our kids? You are able to compare the temperature of the water into Norwegian Arctic, which was noted at three degrees centigrade twelve years ago, and now it's increased to ten degrees. It's amazingly high. I mean, seven degrees.

Yes. So the first big swim, which I did in the Arctic was north of the island of Spittsburgh, which is in the Norwegian Arctic. It's very high up in the Arctic, it's 80 degrees north. Anyway, I did a swim there and the water in summer was three degrees centigrade, as you've explained. I came back twelve years later, the water was no longer three, it was now ten degrees centigrade. So it has gone from three to ten in just twelve years. That's the speed at which is happening. And so you got this warm water moving up the Atlantic, up into the Arctic, pushing up against the ice there. That ice is going to melt, is going to have a huge impact on us.

We know that the climate is changing. We know it by experience. Storms, tsunamis, and uncontrolled fires are constantly going on. And there are two perspectives in this case, in my opinion. There's an individual perspective of regular, just humans, people having nice lives. We do worry about the consequences of climate change, but not many of us are usually doing something about it. And even when we buy food, beverages or clothes, I mean, we don't look at whether they were produced in a proper way in order to save the planet. But we expect, however, that this topic will be taken care of by the business.

New research from the global recruitment firm Robert Walters indicated that 34% of UK office workers would refuse a job offer if a company's environmental sustainability or climate control values do not align with their own. In US, the figure is even higher. It's 41%. France and Chile and Switzerland, 53%. So it sounds like we expect that it will be taken care of. We do understand that something has to be done. But on the other hand, we can do so many things on our own, right?

Yes, of course. Every single day we make purchases, whether it's the food we eat, the clothes which we wear, how we get to work, how we take our children to school. All these things are a decision, it's a purchase. Every single day I'm asking people, please, we've got to become environmentally conscious. We've got to understand that those purchases have an impact on the environment. And so if you've got a choice, I'm urging people to please make the environmentally friendly choice. And also, I found those statistics which you mentioned now absolutely fascinating, how many people would not be prepared to work for a company which doesn't take care of the environment. It's beginning to become very significant. And so HR directors and CEOs of companies are going to have to really focus in on this and take a stand on this issue. It's interesting, a company called Patagonia, a big clothing brand in America, which is really at the forefront of what it means to manufacture clothing on a sustainable basis. Yesterday, the founder of It, he's now donated the whole company for protection of the planet. It's an astonishing decision.

Yeah, it is. And I also found that the companies who improve their sustainability credentials have 40% higher employee retention, according to Deloitte report. Which also sounds great. But we need more companies like Patagonia, right? Definitely.

I mean, who would want to work for a company which is actively damaging the environment? You wouldn't want to do it. And especially the younger kids these days, they see the world very differently to that which ourselves and our parents did for them. Obviously, they're going to have to live in a world where the issues of food security and floods and droughts are ever present. We don't have to imagine what the climate crisis is going to be like. Just look at what is happening in Pakistan right now. A third of the country is underwater. You got over 30 million people without homes now in Pakistan. And this is all because of the climate crisis. So we don't have to imagine what it's going to be like. You can just look there and see what the future is. And that future is coming the way of every nation in the world unless we actually tackle this thing head on. And I think it's companies that can really make a significant difference. I've been for year after year after year, I've been to the big climate summits.

Last year it was in Glasgow, this year it's going to be in Egypt. And what really frustrates me is government ministers are making promises. And sometimes these promises are for 2050 - 2060. And they know full well that they will not be in government in 2050 or 2060. Any government minister will make a promise for 2050 - 2060. Businesses can't do that. Businesses, they have to focus right now on their consumers and on their clients.

This is also my question. I was wondering how difficult it must be to convince the authorities, politicians, and business leaders, to take a closer look to what is happening with our planet. And there was a line which was said by Bill Clinton about you, that Louis doesn't tell us what to do. He shows us what can be done. Yes, that's correct, and it's very true. But are you frustrated sometimes that you do so much? And still, they do understand that it has to be done now, that too late phrase is just around the corner.

Bill Clinton is very generous with that comment. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to do swims in places which graphically show world leaders how the planet is changing, because the scientists can come along, they can produce all the data, but sometimes it's just numbered, and they don't understand just how this is going to impact anybody. So I tried to do swims in places in the world which carry a very, very simple message.

So back in 2007, I went to the North Pole and I swam across an open patch of sea. Just a very simple message that the North Pole, now the Arctic, is melting so much that you can even swim across the North Pole should be frozen over, has been frozen over for thousands and thousands of years. My frustration when I come to these big meetings is, let me give you an example. Last year, I went to do a swim. At this time last year in Greenland, I did this swim across a glacier called a Lula Sat. I mean, it's enormous glacier. The icebergs coming off this glacier are a kilometer tall. And I woke up one morning and I witnessed a mass carving where literally thousands and thousands and thousands of icebergs just poured straight out to sea.

And that glacier now is moving at a speed of 40 meters per day in summer. That was in this time last year. And then I went straight from there to the climate summit in Glasgow. And there you have world leaders who are making promises, as I say, for 2050 - 2060. They don't realize just how quickly this is happening. All they're indifferent to it.

In June this year, you also visited the headquarter of the United Nations. You are an official patron of the United Nations for the protection of the oceans. The message you brought was that if we hit our planet by more than 1.5%, that means that 70% of the coral reefs will die.

So the role which I have now with the United Nations is I'm the patron of the oceans. And when I was appointed this, the Secretary general said, louis, you got one role. Please just be a voice for the oceans. Be a voice for the magnificent wildlife in the ocean. You know, the whales, the dolphins are seals or penguins, but also be a voice for children, because they are going to be inheriting this planet. Increasingly. That role has been now about talking about how to create these big protected areas in our oceans. And I really enjoy this work because it feels absolutely meaningful that we can be part now of creating a series of protected areas around the world to protect our oceans. But it is a race against time. It really is. The changes, as I mentioned earlier, the changes which I've been seeing over 35 years are very quick. And the biggest changes I'm seeing at the moment has been in the polar regions, but also in the coral reefs. So the science is that if we heat our planet by 1.5 degrees Centigrade, 70% of coral reefs will die. If we heat our planet by two degrees, 99% die.

And we are currently on track for way past 2.3 degrees. So unless we take serious, serious action in all the nations of the world, we won't have coral reefs. If you think about coral reefs, I'm sure some of your listeners have dived on coral reefs or snorkeled across them, and you look down and you just see this beauty, these small tropical fish with their colors, the reds and the yellows and the greens and the purples. You see these beautiful great manta rays, turtles, sharks. Imagine losing all that. It's criminal. I can't accept that. And so that's the reason why I do these swims, which is to try highlight what's happening to my next big swim, actually, is going to be across a coral reef. I'm really looking forward to that. And so using that swim to try and get world leaders to understand the difference between a world which we have heated by 1.5 degrees centigrade compared to a world which is a two degree centigrade, they have very different scenarios.

They call you Edmond Hillary of swimming. Edmond Hillary climbed Mount Everest as the first man in the world, and professionally, he was a beekeeper. You are a lawyer who was the first person to undertake a swim on Mount Everest? The first one also to swim over the North Pole and the English Channel. And you both are great examples that in spite of having regular jobs, it's possible to achieve amazing goals. What do you usually say at the business galax where you are invited as a keynote speaker? We meet here today because you are invited to speak at the Best Brands Awards Gala in Poland. What is your message to the business leaders?

Well, specifically, tonight, I'm going to be talking about this swim, which I did in 2007 across the North Pole. I remember arriving in North Pole and looking out over this icy terrain and just thinking to myself just how terribly frightening it is to dive into this water. The water is below zero. The water at the north pole was -1.7 degrees, centigrade unbelievably cold. And nobody had ever done a swimming anywhere close to that water temperature before. And as I say, I remember sitting there looking at this and thinking to myself, we didn't know whether it was possible to even do a swim there. I had done all the training, I was mentally prepared, physically prepared. But you do have to have the courage to dive in and to go for it. And this will be my message tonight. The importance of all nations, of companies around the world, all of us now diving in and committing to protecting the environment. Because if we are always standing there and looking at the problem and not actually taking the action, then the problem is just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. That will be my message tonight. Commitment. Dive in and have the resilience to fight this battle through.

I saw the video which was made during the swim at North Pole. You've done 1 km long swim. It took you 18 minutes 50 seconds exactly. But after getting out of the water, your first thought was that's what you said at TedEx. Your first thought was that you will never ever make another cold water swim in your life again. So what made you jump for another cold water challenge? Because there were like many more.

I know, I remember getting out that water, I was so cold. I mean, 18 minutes and 50 seconds in water, which is below zero, it has such a big impact on the body. I mean, water is an interesting thing, right? So between zero and 100, water is a liquid, above 100 it becomes a gas, below zero, it becomes a solid. So there's actually a tipping point at which water changes completely. And when you get in water below zero, I mean, you begin to start freezing. And I think it's the only sport in the whole world. I'm talking about cold water swimming where the more swims you do, the harder it becomes. Oh, you know, most sports, the more experience you have, the easier it becomes. No, not with cold water swimming. And that is because when you've been really cold, you never quite warm up.

It's still deep down inside you. And yet, as you point out, I've been coming back year after year after year and I think it's this frustration. I've still got this message, I'm still trying to get world leaders to understand the speed of this. Sometimes problems are only solved when you get to a certain point, and when you get to a certain tipping point where enough people hear about it. I pray that I don't have to do many more years of cold water swimming because it has a real impact on your body. My body at the moment I'm 51 and 52, I can't remember, but it feels like an old truck driving down a dirt road. My body is sore from august swimming.

I understand. I would like to emphasize one really important achievement of yours. I'm talking about establishing the largest reserve in the world in the Ross Sea of Antarctica. It happened in 2015 and in the same year, you have also launched Louis Pew Foundation to campaign for marine protected areas in all of the oceans. I've read that your dream is to have 30% of the world's ocean properly protected by 2030. Yeah, it was really, like, amazing achievement, what was already done. But I understand how many has left.

Yes. Getting the Ross Sea protected. If I look back at my life, I think that was the happiest day of my life. For 17 years, scientists have tried to get the Ross Sea protected. Just to explain to your listeners where the Ross Sea is, if you sail from the bottom of New Zealand and you sail from 40 degrees south to 50 degrees south to 60 to 70, eventually you'll see this incredible part of Antarctica. And it was the last wilderness left on this Earth. It is full of these beautiful emperor penguins, which are the penguins with the big white chest and the gold bow ties that go along on their stomachs. It was a place full of humpback whales and krill and Antarctic toothfish. It's the last wilderness area, but big industrial fishing fleets were going down there and catching fish.

Anyway, for 17 years, scientists have been trying to get this area protected. Under international law, 25 nations had to agree it and they all agreed to protect it. Poland was part of this initiative as part of the European Union, so 25 nations plus the European Union all had to agree at just two nations needed persuading, and that was China and Russia.

They saw things very differently to the way all the other nations they do. All the other nations saw it. Anyway, I went down there, I did a swim, and then I went to Moscow to meet the people responsible for ocean protection there. And I shuttled backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards for a two year period between there and Washington and eventually China. And last, Russia signed the deal. And that day, I don't think I will ever be able to repeat how happy it made me, because this, as I say, is one of the last wildernesses left on Earth and we need to protect these places. They are precious.

Yes, they are. How does swimming build you up as a person? As a human?

I try to swim every single day and sometimes I'm dealing with some very difficult governments or difficult businesses. For me, it's so obvious that the climate is changing. For me, it's so obvious that the impact is going to be huge on all of us and it also has a peace dimension. And what I mean by that is that when we damage the environment, conflict is going to happen because people fight over limited resources when they're limited resources, there's going to be conflict. And so to protect the environment is to build peace. And peace is a beautiful thing. Yes, it really is. And so I'm often dealing with work, which is quite frustrating, and I see I'm trying to get a point across and sometimes people aren't getting it. Then at the end of the day, I go down to the sea and I go for a swim and it makes me feel it relaxes me a lot as soon as I dive into the ocean, and then I take a few swimming strokes and then I'm on my own. And then every time it calms me down, it makes me feel better as a person.

I have the same feeling when I'm horse riding. Yes. And the happiest day for me was when I was spending my holidays in Ireland and we just found some stable with horses and we were able to ride on the beach at the Atlantic Ocean. It was amazing. Seriously, I know what you're saying about being relaxed and feeling fulfilled even. It's a pretty amazing feeling, I think.

Also, for example, swimming across the English Channel from England to France is a very interesting swim to do, and that is because they're very strong tides. There some of the strongest tides in the world. And it's an amazing swim because it's the only swim in the whole world where the impact can have such a big these tides can have such a big impact on the swim.

So often people think that you're going to do it, let's say 10 hours from England to France, and they're just a few hundred meters off France and suddenly the tide changes. And from a ten hour swim, it suddenly becomes a 15 hours swim. You're going to do 15 hours and then you're right there near France and the tide turns and it's no longer going to be a 15, it's going to be a 20 hours swim. It's never the other way around. It's never you think it's going to be 20 hours and then at 15 hours, your coach comes to the edge of the boat and says, louis, you're going to be there in two minutes. Now it's always the other way around. So the thing about swimming is there's no other sport like that.

Like, imagine if you're running a marathon and it's 42 marathon and then you're just near the end and then they say, oh, sorry, the end has moved another 20 km down the road. So what long distance swimming does is it really does the goal posts change very quickly and so it builds that mental resilience that you're very close to France, the tide changes, you just have to take a deep breath and just say, right, let me do another hour now, and just keep on going. It builds that resilience muscle.

Definitely. You've learned two very important lessons on Mt. Everest. It was quite dangerous. What I've read about this swim and those lessons, which I'm talking about, are "something that has worked in the past, doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work in the future". That's the first one. And the second one: "for real and effective change to take place, one has to prepare to completely change one mindset."

You drew those conclusions based on really terrifying moments because you were close to drowning there.

Yes. So, just to explain, I went up onto Everest to do a swim there. The glaciers in the Himalayas are beginning to melt away, and these glaciers provide water to India, China, Pakistan, you know, countries with huge populations. And water is essential for life on Earth. It's essential for drinking, it's essential for agriculture, it's essential for industry, for power generation, we need water. So I wanted to go up there and do a swim anyway. I tried to do the swim, and I nearly drowned. It's just so difficult to breathe up there, five and a half kilometers above sea level. It's really difficult to breathe. It's interesting. If you climb up Mount Everest, you can slow down or you can climb with oxygen, but you can't do that with swimming. Anyway, so I had this very bad experience. And so the leader of the expedition, he pulled me out of the water, and then a few days later, we tried it again. What he said to me he said to me, he said, Lewis, you better change the way you swim. He said to me, you change or you will drown. And so when somebody says that to you, you really focus.

And so instead of swimming crawl, he wanted me to swim breaststroke so I could breathe instead of swimming really fast, which I normally swim when I get cold water. He wanted me to swim really slowly to preserve the oxygen. And then lastly, it was also about a mental attitude, which you need when you're approaching big mountains. He said, Lewis, you can't bully Mount Everest. You need to swim with humility.

And we then tried it a second time, and I was fortunately able to make that swim. And that's where we got those real lessons from.

I will quote you again. "The only thing that is stopping us from achieving our dreams and ambitious is fear." Has fear ever stopped you? And I'm speaking about swimming life in general.

Fear is an interesting thing because fear is really contagious. So when I'm about to go into the Arctic and do a swim, or done Antarctica, about to do a swim, if I see anybody in my team that's frightened, it makes me frightened. It makes everybody frightened. So I'm always looking for people who are courageous, because courage is also contagious. And it's inspiring when you see somebody who's really courageous, you realize or you think to yourself, and you think, I can do it. And so whenever I choose a team, I'm looking. For courageous people, whether that be the Doctor, you think about the responsibility the Doctor's got. If I die, it's not going to look good on their record. Everything the Doctor, the boat driver, my coach, everybody. I'm looking for really courageous people. But yeah, there have been a few swims where I've been really frightened. The swim which I did down in the Ross Sea, I was very frightened. These are very high consequence environments. If you get them wrong, you can die quickly.

You're risking your life. You are aware of that, right?

Yeah. I mean, some people think that, okay, you must be crazy. He doesn't care about life. No, it's the complete opposite. I care deeply about life. These swims are about protecting life in all its forms.

Yeah, that's true. How different are the oceans? Which one is your favorite one?

It's like asking a parent, which is your favorite child? I love swimming in Norway. I started my cold water swimming in Norway, swimming up and down the long fields. And for those of your listeners who've been to Norway, they'll know what I'm talking about. These incredibly long, beautiful fjords, and then waterfalls pouring off the mountains, and then these beautiful little villages. And all the houses are different colors, red, yellows and blues. A day swimming in a Norwegian field is a day of happiness.

In order to prepare yourself for a cold water swim, you said that you had to train your mind. How is this process going?

If you're going to do a swimming, really cold water, you can't just go train in a swimming pool and then jump into the North Pole. You have to climatize your body. And so we do all the training in a swimming pool initially, but then we then have to go out into the ocean and start doing the training. And then we have to go into colder and colder and colder water. That's the hard bit. It's acclimatizing one's body.

So I often do that in Iceland, where I start training in water, which is twelve. And then every day we're going, we're finding different parts of the ocean where the water is colder and colder. And then I do the final bit of training in rivers in Iceland. And they got these big glaciers in Iceland. And these rivers are really short, they're fast, they're cold. You swim in there. It's very hard training, but that gets you ready for when you go to the polar regions. And in the process of doing these swims, it gets your mind ready.

You said once that when you've got your purpose, everything becomes possible. After a really difficult time of the pandemic, many people started to search for this purpose in their jobs. They are trying to find a purpose in their life. What would you advise them?

The pandemic was incredibly hard. I think it was hard for many, many people, especially the youth. Humans love interaction and love talking to people and being with people, and that's how we build connections. For me, the pandemic was very hard. My mother died of Covid.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I had always promised my mother that I would be with her till her last day, and then they wouldn't allow me the old age one would not allow me to be with my mother. It broke my heart. It completely broke my heart. I was also in discussions with the Russian government to try and create more protected areas around Antarctica. So instead of just the one in the Ross Sea, we wanted another one in East Antarctica. We wanted to have one in the Antarctic Peninsula and one in the Wettle sea, and that all fell through. And now the war isn't the possibility at the moment to build those protected areas which are so needed. And in these circumstances, it's very difficult to see light. But one has to stand up again. One has to refocus. One has to focus on what your purpose is. And for me, my purpose is to try to be a voice for the oceans. So every single day I wake up, I swim in the oceans. I've got a big swim coming up.

Finding your purpose is not an easy thing. I think some people are really lucky. They go to school, and there are school by the school teacher. What do you want to do when you grow up? For many kids, it's really simple. I want to become a doctor. And then you find you meet them when they're 35, 40, and they're a doctor, and they're very happy. They knew what their purpose was. But for many of us, we have to dig deep down inside ourselves and find it.

It's a long journey sometimes, yes.

And it's a very long journey. And some people, I don't think, ever quite find it. I would urge those people to really dig deep, because when you find your purpose, there's a light which goes off, because then you realize, this is what I'm meant to be doing with my life. And actually, there's very few other things which I could do, because this feels so meaningful.

It was really beautifuly said. I think that it's a good point to finish our conversation, although I would love to make it longer. Thank you so much for this inspiring conversation, for your strength and for your determination in despite what you decided to take and for doing so many good things for our planet. I think that this interview should be listened by each person on this planet. But even if one person listened and then acted in the best interest of the oceans, then I would say that it was really worth it, and let's hope for it, but it's going to happen. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.