The Explorers Club was founded in New York City in 1904 to promote the scientific exploration of land, sea, air, and space. The Club supports research and education in the physical, natural and biological sciences [see map of expeditions above].
Over the years, the Club’s members have included people who were the first to the North Pole, the first to the South Pole, the first to the summit of Mount Everest, the first to the deepest point in the ocean, and the first to the surface of the moon.
Its mission is to advance field research, scientific exploration, resource conservation, and the ideal that it is vital to preserve the instinct to explore.
When we think of the sport of open water swimming, it is similar to one giant global Explorers Club in the Open Water.
In the Open Water Explorers Club, people of all ages and abilities continue to explore and expand mankind’s knowledge and abilities to exist and thrive in the world’s oceans, seas, lakes and rivers.
Open water explorers like Lynne Cox and Lewis Pugh push the boundaries of where people can swim in extreme northern and southern climes without wetsuits or protective wear.
Open water explorers like Ram Barkai and his South African colleagues push the boundaries of where and when people can in rough cold waters from Patagonia to Lake Zurich in winter.
Open water explorers like Martin Strel and Marcos Díaz push the boundaries of where people can swim in warm and wild remote places from the Yangtze River to Indonesia.
Open water explorers like David Yudovin and relays of Japanese, Israeli, American, and South African swimmers push the boundaries of where people can swim in remote and unlikely places from Africa to Asia.
Open water explorers like Benoît Lecomte, Jennifer Figge, Guy Delage and Ben Hooper push the boundaries of intercontinental swimming where very few people have ever swum or even seen first-hand.
While the locations where terra firma explorers can make unprecedented discoveries on land continue to shrink with technology, the locations where open water explorers continue to expand. It is one thing to explore the world’s oceans in a ship or a boat or a submarine, but it is another experience altogether while swimming stroke-by-stroke and taking in everything while being embedded in the marine environment without any protection.
It is the golden age of open water swimming where it is seemingly limitless where one can swim and explore the marine world.
© 2015 Daily News of Open Water Swimming
“to educate, enthuse, and entertain all those who venture beyond the shoreline“