What's It Feel Like to Swim the Yantze? Big River Man Shares His Story (Interview)

Big River Man illustrates the story of Martin Strel, the Guinness World Record-winning marathon swimmer who tirelessly campaigns for the health of the world's rivers. He has swam the Mississippi, the Danube, and the Paraná Rivers, but the toss-up for most dangerous is between the Yangtze, the world's most polluted river, and the Amazon, likely the world's wildest.

Strel overcame them all and now has captive audiences around the world, both on the internet with each swimming challenge he takes on, and through the feature-length film. I had the chance to chat with him while he was in the U.S. over the holidays (and he'll stay through at least New Year's Day, when he'll be out at Coney Island for the Polar Bear Club swim-—check back here for footage), and he had a lot to say, despite the language barrier, about a very universal message.

Planet Green: How did you get started swimming for a cause?
Martin Strel: When I swam the Slovenian River for the first time, 30 years ago, it was still pretty clean. It was much worse 13 years later, much dirtier. It was in my mind that this needed to change, and I was just a swimmer, but I had good publicity, and now I can say that the river is much cleaner than 15 years ago. So I went around the world with this message.

When I was young, I lived close to a small river and the government poured asphalt very close to the river. The residual effect of toxic chemicals leaked into the water and destroyed the health of the river. It was more than 30 years before any fish or vegetation began to grow again, so it made a picture on my mind when I was young, and I've followed that throughout the years.

PG: Did you experience any health problems while swimming the more polluted rivers?
MS: It's not possible to compare the Amazon with the Yangtze or the Ganges. The Amazon is muddy, but not so polluted. My body was terrible when I swam the Yangtze. I had big problems with everything—my liver, my eyes, my ears. I spent the last two weeks in the hospital. It was so polluted with toxic waste, doctors had to clean my blood every night.

PG: What's your diet like?
MS: I eat very simple foods. When I swim, I eat no meat—the deforestation caused by cattle ranching is too great. I eat fish 3 times a day. I drink very special wine exclusive to Slovenia. It has lower alcohol content and high in antioxidants. If I drink a different wine, I don't feel good, but if I drink one bottle of this wine, I swim very well. Sometimes two bottles, sometimes just half a bottle. 

I eat a lot—a lot—of fruits, a lot of vegetables. I eat simple soups several times a day, lots of rice and beans, I eat fish several times a day.

In the film where I am portrayed drunk?where I'm seen with whiskey, it's not so much to drink as to wash my face and disinfect much of the contaminants from the water I was swimming in.

PG: Have you been able to measure your impact in terms of helping the health of the world's rivers?
MS: Yes, a lot. When I swam in Slovenia, one of the main situations was thousands of people living right on the water, and all of their waste going into the river, contaminating the water for the entire country. Through raising awareness with my swim, the government took action and put better systems in place. It brought these people's standards of living up.

When I swam in Romania, the government put out a lot of news on the quality of water in the Danube. On the Yangtze, 400 million people live there, people throw things away and for some, the water is like the trash. The Nile is terrible, especially in Egypt. I would like to change this a little bit. 

In China, it was difficult to get permission because the government didn't like what I was doing to raise awareness. One of the most important things was the quality of the water, the pollution is great and there is work to do. But after raising awareness, other governments started to put pressure on the Chinese government to act.

But it's not just China, we have a lot of work to do in Europe, the U.S., everywhere in the world we have work to do.

Learn more about Martin Strel's adventures.