Gang Jeong - No Navy Base

Last year when i swam around Jeju i swam through some water that tasted very fresh and salty - completely different from everywhere else where the water smelled of sewerage, dead, rotting fish and/or oil and fuel. I swam into the little harbour and was surprised at the lack of detritus i had commonly encountered in most harbours - plastic bags, bottles, cans etc. I remember commenting to Steve and asking where we were. When he checked our chart he said we were in Gang Jeong. Gang Jeong had the cleanest water in Jeju!

And this is where the powers-that-be have decided to build a naval base.

I have seen with my own eyes the terrible state of the sea around Jeju, the result of pollution, overfishing, and habitat destruction.

Nevermind that Jeju is a designated "World Peace Island" and the building of a naval base means no one will take that designation seriously - a missed opportunity.  Jeju has a reputation for being 'natural' and 'clean'. Instead of building on this branding, the powers-that-be have chosen to destroy the last of Jeju that really is natural and clean - a missed opportunity.

From an environmental, a social and a tourism perspective Jeju will lose so much more than it will gain.

Please go to http://www.savejejuisland.org/Save_Jeju_Island/Welcome.html

The sea belongs to us all.

Police at Gang Jeong

Protesters and police

Police guarding the lane way leading to the protest site

Entrance to the site

Protesters are living in tents

Heading down to the site

Protest Thursday 11th August, 2011.

Gang Jeong -  under threat

No Naval Base!

World Environment and Peace Summer School

On Saturday i was a panel participant for the 2011, 11th Peace Island Forum. It was a great opportunity for me to share some of my first hand knowledge of the ills impacting our oceans. Then yesterday i gave a two and a half hour presentation to a group of 8 students titled "The Environment and the Individual".

We started the session with some fun ice breakers before getting down to the main agenda. I showed several TED Talks (with Korean subtitles) and asked the participants to note down the issues that impacted on our oceans. Students then worked in pairs to make a list which they displayed to the rest of the class on a  large sheet of butcher paper (provided by Big Swim team member Eugene - thanks Eugene!). Participants were then divided into 2 groups and  told to choose what they felt were the 3 most important issues and justify their choices to the rest of the class.

Then each group spent time discussing what they, as individuals, could do to help solve the problems they had identified They then presented their ideas to the class.

My role was only that of presenter and facilitator. When some of the ideas or solutions  presented seemed a little abstract i tried to get the students to think in more concrete terms. For example, one group suggested "provide environmental education". I then asked the hard questions such as what is environmental education? How can you, as an individual, provide it? To whom? By problematising the solutions  presented and thinking critically about how to enact change at the level of the individual, students were able to see that they, as individuals, have the power to create change for the better.

I had a lot of fun and i hope the participants did to. If anyone would like to hold their own workshop i'm happy to pass on my resources. Please get in touch ~ jeju big swim (all one word) at gee mail dot com.

Team Jeju Big Swim 2011

The Jeju Big Swim team is growing. It's also changing. Of course there is team member Sung Mi who worked so tirelessly last year and without whose efforts, Jeju Big Swim would not have happened. And that is definately the case again this year.

Sung Mi was supposed to have flown off to Mongolia today however the trip has been cancelled thanks to cyclone Muifa. Mongolia's loss, but definately our gain!

We have team member Eugene who has got our web site up and running in both Korean and English.  Thanks to Eugene's efforts the day's events, schedule and other relevant information is all in one place (www.jejubigswim.com).

We are really lucky that Mr Kim Cheon Dae has joined the team. He is the president of the lifeguard team who swam with me on the last day of last years Jeju Big Swim. Mr Kim is very committed to making Jeju Big Swim a community event  and is excited about its potential to foster environmental education and awareness. Mr Kim is liaising with the marine police, coordinating the kayakers and is responsible for swimmer registrations. He is also dealing with the safety issues and sorting out the logistics of the swims.

We are a very small team - but we are hoping that from small things, big things will grow. 

We have received support from several people. My university, Southern Cross University, provided free gym and pool membership so that i could train.

Mr Lee, from Mr Lee's Bike Shop, is supporting JBS by providing a 50cc scooter - with all the running around we've had to do it has been worth its weight in gold. A huge thankyou Mr Lee!

We are still looking for someone who can act as translator and manage our Korean blog and Facebook page.

Mr Lee and the 50cc scooter outside his shop.

Korea - Land of the Last Minute

 I have spent the past month wondering if i was going to make it to Jeju to participate in Jeju Big Swim 2011. Despite telling them that my participation was not 100% confirmed, Southern Cross University still provided me with free access to the gym and pool so that i could train. After an anxious wait, the World Environment and Peace Summer School finally came through with a return flight from Brisbane to Jeju. I received flight confirmation details on Wednesday afternoon. I had one night to pack and get myself sorted before i had to leave for the trip to Brisbane.

When i finally arrived in Jeju i was a little (a lot!) disconcerted to find that only the Jeju Big Swim  concert event had been organised. However, my arrival seemed to be the catalyst needed and since then it's been a mad scramble to pull it all together. A series of desperate phone calls very late on Sunday night culminated in Sung Mi and i, at 10.30pm, sitting in a norae bang attending a rather bizarre "emergency" meeting convened by the team member responsible for community participation. We were greeted with half empty whiskey bottles and long speeches. It was quite clear that if Jeju Big Swim 2011 was going to happen, then we were going to have to do it ourselves - and pretty quickly at that. As i don't speak Korean most of the work fell to Sung Mi who has been doing a great job.

But today Sung Mi flies off to Mongolia and won't be back till swim day. Lucky for us, on Thursday, Mr Kim Cheon Dae stepped up to the plate. Cheon Dae is the head of the life saving group i swam with on the final day of last year's JBS and was at the meeting on Sunday night. He is organising to have sea kayakers accompany any 10 km swimmers, sorting out safety and swim logistics, liaising with the marine police and so on. Mr Kim Cheon Dae totally gets Jeju Big Swim and has even agreed to be our media spokesperson.

A huge thankyou to Mr Kim Cheon Dae. 

Jeju Big Swim 2011

Jeju Big Swim 2011 will be held on Saturday August 13th. This year it is a community event whereby everyone can participate. Once again, Jeju Big Swim is an official event of the World Environment and Peace Summer School.


This year there will be many ways to participate. There will be a 50 metre swim for kids and beginners, a 1 km swim and a 10km. There will also be an opportunity for non-swimmers to walk instead of swim.

We've had great support - World Environment and Peace Summer School provided my air ticket, Southern Cross University provided free pool and gym membership so i could train, and Mr Lee, of Mr Lee's bike shop here in Jeju has given me a scooter to use while i'm here.

The web page is slowly coming together at www.jejubigswim.com thanks to Eugene and Kenny. We've also fired up the Facebook Jeju Big Swim community page and (Korean) Cyworld will be operational soon (thanks Kenny!).

Jeju Big Swim is the result of a lot of hard work by the Jeju Big Swim team. More about the team coming soon......

SWIMMING AROUND JEJU ~ WHAT I SAW.....



While i was swimming around Jeju i wish i had a swim cam. You know - a camera attached to my head so people could see exactly what i could see. If i had such a device the seas might be cleaner than what they are. I knew the sea around Jeju wasn't great; you just have to visit any beach to realise that. Nevertheless, i really wasn't prepared for the reality of what i saw. As i don't have a swim cam, i will just have to tell you.



The water i swam through smelled. And it smelled bad. Sometimes it smelled of sewerage, sometimes it smelled of oil and fuel, and sometimes it smelled of dead rotting fish. In some places it smelled of all those things together, like at Hengwon and at Pyeoson. Rather ironically, the only place where the sea DIDN'T smell bad was near Gangjeong, where the powers-that-be want to build a Naval base. The waters around Gangjeong smelled (and tasted!) like the ocean should - clean, "fresh", and salty.



I swam through a lot of garbage. Sometimes Steve had to call out so i wouldn't swim headlong into a plastic bag or an empty oil container floating in a pile of muck. But what was more disturbing was just how much garbage was under the surface, distributed throughout the water column as far as i could see. In too many places i would look down and see ramyeon bowls, drink cans, ice cream wrappers, cigarette lighters (!), foil and plastic packaging, plastic bottles and bottle caps, plastic forks and spoons, chopsticks and chopstick wrappers. I saw frightening amounts of polystyrene foam,  hundreds and hundreds of paper cups, and thousands of plastic bags, in every state of deterioration from whole bags to small fragments. And i saw plastic, plastic and more plastic. I was shocked and saddened to see small schools of fish eating it. Of course they will die.

Swimming at Hamdeok Beach with plastic bag, can, polystyrene foam and other detritus
(Photo Alicia Cabezuda)

Talking of fish, i didn't see a lot. And what fish i did see were all very small. One effect of overfishing is that the fish in affected areas don't survive long enough to grow into big, healthy breeders. The result is a less resilient fish population that matures younger, is smaller and weaker, and  produces fewer eggs. Sad to say, Jeju has over-exploited and very depleted fish stocks.

When you experience Jeju from the sea, as i did, it soon becomes apparent that there is very little of Jeju's "natural" environment left. Evidence of habitat destruction is everywhere.  It was very rare to not see a road, a building or a harbour all along the coast. 

Pyeoson Beach is representative of the kind of habitat destruction i'm talking about. It is often referred to as "tourism development". If you go there you can see that this area was once an estuary surrounded by sand dunes. Sand dune estuarine areas are home to particularly rich and diverse eco-systems. It has been completely annihilated. The creeks and streams have been built over and are now drains whilst the sand dunes have been flattened to make roads, carparks and picnic areas. All the plants and animals that made up that eco-system are no more.

Probably the most upsetting thing i saw during the whole swim was the way hundreds and hundreds of people picnicking on the grass at Pyeoson made no effort to take their rubbish with them when they left. To get to the beach to swim i had to walk, literally ankle deep, through the previous night's litter - pizza boxes, take away food containers, plastic bags, plastic bottles, broken glass, ramyeon bowls, drink cans, empty cigarette packets, ice cream wrappers, and so on.

It is this mindset and behaviour that The Jeju Big Swim hopes to change.

Sherrin

IT WASN'T JUST US ~ Part 1

IN THE BEGINNING.......

The Jeju Big Swim - what an adventure! But everyone needs to know that though i swam, and Steve kayaked, it wasn't just us. So here's a rundown on what it took to make The Jeju Big Swim.

In the beginning i didn't know if i really could swim around Jeju. I'd read about a guy, Martin Strehl, who had swum the Amazon. His swim inspired me to think seriously about swimming around Jeju as a way to raise environmental awareness. Martin Strehl was older (and fatter!) than me so i figured that if he could swim the Amazon, then maybe i could swim around Jeju - but i wasn't sure. So Arni Highfield and his family, visiting Jeju on their yacht Jade, offered to help me find out. Accompanied by Arni in a dinghy with the dinkiest outboard i've ever seen, and dodging some humongous jellyfish, i swam from Kimnyoung Harbour to Kimnyoung Beach, a distance of just over 2 kilometres. I knew then that swimming around Jeju was a do-able project.

I started training in the Ramada Hotel Sports Centre pool with help from swimming coach Kim Hyo Jin, and eventually met Steve Oberhauser, a white water rafting, mountain man from America, and soon to be the owner of a pretty, two-person, bright yellow sea kayak. The Jeju Big Swim Team was born.

Web pages, blogs, Facebook and Twitter are essential to a project like ours. However, being completely clueless about such things it was Justin Nalepa and Nicole Erwin who finally got us sorted. Justin and Nicole are STILL getting us sorted! And Lisa Caraway, despite crossing 3 continents, made our webpage. We finally had a presence on the www! Kenny Kim was in charge of the K-blog. He started off posting translated material we emailed to him but before long he was taking the material himself, translating it, and posting on the K-blog.

In the beginning Sung Mi was our media liaison person. But soon she was contacting people about money and sponsorship, setting up meetings and acting as translator. Sung Mi has been in on The Jeju Big Swim since the beginning and she has done a fantastic job.

As interest in the project grew Sung Mi, by this time taking final exams, was struggling to keep up with everything that was going on and we realised we needed a dedicated translator. Jisu joined the team - and we are so glad she did! Jisu's skills lay not just in her English language abilities, but in the way she could communicate in a way that culturally, both Koreans and us foreigners could understand. Now that's a skill!

Jessie Dishaw put together an Open Mic night for us. People came and that event not only helped spread the word about what we wanted to do, it raised over 400,000 won.

Major sponsorship was proving elusive so we were ecstatic when Prof Koh and Kim Miran invited us to swim as one of the official events of the 2010 World Environment and Peace Summer School. Under the umbrella of such a great organisation and with their promise of substantial funding we finally started to believe that The Jeju Big Swim would really happen. We were especially heartened when KCTV presented us with a cheque for 1 million won. After more rejections than we cared to think about, we had finally found a Jeju business willing to do more than just pay lip service to Jeju and its environment.

However, as we were to find out, that was just the beginning. Jeju girl, Hong Sunyoung, though living in England, put the word out to all her Jeju friends. They rallied to our cause providing us with in-kind practical support and much needed safety equipment. Jeju business woman Ra Jung Im not only put her office at our disposal for meetings, but spent considerable time, energy and money to provide us with distress flares. Yang Gi Jung gave us a first aid kit and Nuri Mart contributed snacks and drinks. Mr Yang of the Samyang Family Mart provided us with several Cass beer bags that proved extremely useful for stowing our gear on board the kayak.

Father Jerry Cotter demonstrated tremendous support for us by leading a "Blessing of the Fleet" ceremony attended by many supporters and well-wishers and the media.

The media started to take an interest thanks to friend and 해남 Lee Han Young in Seoul, and Sung Mi did a great job organising and coordinating all the interviews. In support of my training i had been given free gym membership by the generous people at the Ramada Sports Centre however a rather serendipitous meeting with Sarah Crivelli and Suzie Grace on Samyang Beach at just the right time got me out of the pool and training in the sea. I was getting fitter, i had the full support of my school, and start day was fast approaching......

Sherrin