Jono Ridler: Ultra-marathon swimmer completes record breaking swim against bottom trawling

Endurance swimmer Jono Ridler has completed a 1367km journey, swimming the length of the North Island, in an effort to raise awareness against bottom trawling. 

After getting out of the water on Saturday, Ridler led a convoy of people to the steps of Parliament, where multiple ministers waited, and he was presented with a taonga.

Ridler spoke to Andrew Dickens about the difficult journey, "a good percentage of the time it was very tough," he said. 

"The further we got south, the tougher it got as well with the cold water, jellyfish, and, and long sessions, spending a lot of time in my own head trying to battle through all of that."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:18):
I've been following this man all summer, all the way
from North Cape down to Wellington. Ninety days, one thy
three hundred and sixty seven kilometers four hundred and sixty
eight hours in the water. John O Ridler has completed
what could be the longest unassisted stage swim ever, finishing
in Wellington. He finished Saturday midday, arrived at noon downtown.
I saw him swim past me at Tyro and in

(00:41):
the Cora Mandel. Over the course of summer. This feed
is equivalent to more than fifty three cook straight crossings
and all with a message to end bottom trawling, and
John O. Riddler joins me. Now, John O, congratulations mate,
thank you.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
No, thanks too much, Edrew. It's still kind of sinking
in for me. But hey, that's cool that we swam
past you in Tyler. I didn't know that I.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Was following you. I've been following you all summer because
I was doing the holiday breakfast show and I said,
he look, he's there, he's there, He's there. And then
I was down in Tyree just at the time, and
I just watched it on the screen and I could
see the little flotilla of boats and there you were
out in the middle of the ocean. It must and
I can't believe anyone does this. It must have been lonely,
even though you have boats, but lonely, scary, and hard.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
It was all of those things. Not all the time, fortunately,
but a good percentage of the time it was. It
was very tough. The further we got south, the tougher it.
God as well, was the cold water, jellyfish and long sessions.
Spending a lot of time in my own head trying
to battle through all of that.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, mister Truth was that. Mister Truth was a bit
of a hard taskmaster, wasn't He kept on some yet?
We can do a double session here, mate, Oh where
you go?

Speaker 3 (01:54):
We had two names for him. One of one of
his names was kept in Sunshine and the other one
was kept in something else. I won't miss it on there.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
But now now, I actually thought, when you got out
of the water on Saturday and you were sitting there talking,
I went, it's great. I mean, you didn't look like
you've lost lots of weight. You didn't look you know,
gornt or anything. How are you physically?

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Physically? I feel great. A lot of people have said
that you should look more better, you should look way worse,
but I actually feel quite good. There's a few kind
of muscular things that I've got to work through, but
my body's held up amazingly. I ended up putting on
a little bit of weight actually during the course of

(02:38):
the swim, and I think that's attributed to a couple
of things. One is you put your body in the
stress that actually holds onto weight, and then the other
was that I was eating enormous amounts for the first
eight nine weeks or so. I brought that down a
little bit over the last three or four weeks. But yeah,
I actually put on five kilos and then I thought

(03:00):
that was probably enough.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Absolutely well, fat floats, they say, so you know that
might have actually helped you out at some point. Look,
I could talk about the physical thing and all day long,
but we're running out of time. And there was a
message to this and this is about bottom trawling. Do
you feel that Tama Portucka and the government heard what
you were saying.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
I think it was heard loud and clear, and you
can't ignore how many people showed up physically. That was
a very strong showing. And then to add to that
the now seventy seven thousand signatures that we have on
the petition in bottom trawling, starting with steamounts in both
the high seas and at home, it's I think it's
going to be really difficult to ignore. I appreciate that there's,

(03:44):
as Tama Patucker said, the balance between economy and environments,
but there is a case where both of those things
are possible, and that's what we're looking for.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
And yesterday there were headlines from the industry and they
got stuck into your claims and your organization. They said
that they avoid sensitive habitats, they say they're tightly regulated,
they say bottom trawling is only two percent of the business,
and they claim that Live Ocean has not been engaging
in a dialogue with them. So do you want to
dispute that or is this a sign that they are

(04:16):
feeling the pressure.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, I think firstly, i'd say that there is a
common interest and I saw the media release through is
a common interest in what we're looking to achieve, which
is abundant and thriving environment, and that will benefit everybody.
It will benefit the general public. It will benefit the
fishery as well. We just have different ideas around how

(04:39):
to achieve that. I understand that Seafood Insin had reached
out to Live Ocean. Obviously this project has been quite
all consuming that we look forward to continuing and moving
forward with that dialogue from this point.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
And when will this swim be officially ratified as the
most awesome swim ever a world record swim? Do you
have any details about that?

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah, I'll be working on that over this weekend, give
myself a little bit of time, Yeah, to bounce back.
But there's an awesome couple of guys that have been
great with pulling all of that together in the background,
and we'll figure out next steps there. So it does
take a bit of time. Hopefully we can move that
forward quickly.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Johno. Congratulations. The rest of New Zealand, All of New
Zealand is in awe of you. How amazing is that?

Speaker 1 (05:28):
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