Last April, one man went where no human has really ever had a desire to go before: for a swim in the toxic Gowanus Canal. Chris Swain, a 47-year-old environmental activist and part-time acupuncturist took a dip last year to raise awareness for one of America’s most polluted waterways and to try to start an effort to clean up the superfund site.
Though Swain described his thirty-minute swim last year as tasting “like blood, poop, ground-up grass, detergent, and gasoline,” he decided to try again this Saturday, with the goal of swimming the entire length of the 1.8-mile canal, flesh-eating bacteria and gonorrhea be damned. He achieved his goal, and according to the Daily News, even got to taste the fruits of his labor by swallowing a mouthful of canal water sewage three times.
Here are some shots from Swain’s swim:
