A mental health battle in 2020 led Shona Riddell to embark on an eye-opening journey of wild swimming – the kind that doesn’t cease when the weather turns cold.

My decision to start wild swimming arrived out of the blue, at the tail end of 2020. I was standing at my office window on Miramar Peninsula, Wellington, looking out at the choppy surf in the harbour. Tales of the ocean have always fascinated me and my second maritime history book was about to be published. But I felt disconnected from the sea, viewing it through the salt-sprayed glass. I wanted to get to know it better and I decided I was going to do it by swimming.

That decision has taken me through eight seasons, from bright summer blues to heavy greys and biting cold, new friends and discoveries about myself and the ocean. At the beginning, I had a lot to learn. I couldn’t really swim. I was afraid of slimy seaweed tendrils wrapping around my ankles, of enigmatic shadows in the water. How long should I stay in? How far should I swim? What about Jaws, stingrays, biting seals, pinching crabs, oh my!

Swimming outdoors in a natural body of water (ocean, lakes, rivers) is called open water swimming, or wild swimming. Open, wild: alluring and liberating. An opportunity to enjoy nature, fresh coastal air and sparkling blue sea. Eco-therapy, some call it. I thought of it more as a respite from the rotten year we’d just had.

Free falling

March, 2020. During the first nationwide lockdown I’d juggled completing a book manuscript and working part-time with trying unsuccessfully to homeschool my two young daughters, one of whom has special needs. “I’m fine,” I told the outside world via Zoom. But I wasn’t really. After lockdown ended and the new normal began, so did my slide into darkness.

At the end of 2020 my lighthouse history book, Guiding Lights, was published and the marketing commenced. Previously I’d enjoyed promoting my books but this time each interview felt like a block of Jenga, expertly extracted but leaving me more vulnerable. I tried to shake off the uneasiness and feel grateful for the attention, but I began identifying with some of the lighthouses I’d written about: slowly eroded by giant waves, sinking into the sea.

“You’re so lucky to live in New Zealand,” commented one of my American interviewers. I was lucky, and I felt guilty: why was I talking about my silly book when the world was suffering? How could I overcome this constant feeling of dread? There was so much noise, roars reverberating through my head. I knew the lions weren’t really surrounding me, yet there they were, ready to pounce at any moment. My breathing heightened and heightened, until I couldn’t breathe at all.

Acute panic disorder, said the doctor, whose eyes I couldn’t meet. I went on anti-anxiety meds to get through my writers’ festival events, but it wasn’t enough and I had to pull out of a few. After it was all over, I climbed into bed and stayed there, shaking and crying with the curtains drawn, trapped in my psychological chamber of horrors. Hyperbole whirled around my head: “Everyone else is coping. You’re worthless. You’ve failed.” I was frightened of myself; that cold, hard voice shouting in my head was mine. I just wanted it to stop.

The pills I was taking eventually kicked in, but they stole my emotional range: the highs along with the lows. I felt disconnected from everyone, so I turned to the sea where for a few precious moments I felt present in my body. The ocean didn’t need me to be anything. It was an immersive, shimmery underwater world and I felt more and more drawn to it.

Swimming solo

At Worser Bay, a sheltered, sandy beach on the peninsula, I would step each day into the cobalt water, take slow breaths to get through the cold entry, and then submerge. The world sounded different underwater: a gentle, humming vibration. I swam beneath a shining blue ceiling, over galaxies of plump starfish planted in the sand, weaving past bobbing kelp strands and coming up for breaths near oystercatchers perched on the rocks. Afterwards I would flip onto my back, stretch out my arms and look up at the puff-cloud sky, rocked by gentle swells.

Swimming felt like an expansion: enriching, momentous, and satisfying. Like a crisp, blue sheet flapping on the clothesline. My sea swims became the highlight of my day. They felt important.

But I’ll never forget my first dip on a chilly, overcast autumn day. This felt serious: I was swimming past summer. The sea huffed and sighed its thick, rolling tide as I stepped into the foamy water. The pebbles felt rough under my feet, the southerly wind pricked my skin and I yelped as the cold waves slapped against my thighs. I was wearing a short-sleeved wetsuit and I breast-stroked at waist-depth parallel to shore, stiffening like a meerkat every time I saw a dark shape in the water. Afterwards, I stumbled home in my wet gear and it took me ages to stop shivering.

Keeping safe

I needed to know what was happening to my body when I stepped into the sea. I discovered the Outdoor Swimming Society, a UK website with clear safety advice that applies worldwide. The most important tips that helped me were:

• When you get into cold water there’s a “gasp” reflex, so give your body time to adjust.
• Don’t stay in for a fixed time: start with short dips in the warmer months and if you ever feel weird, get out.
• Get dry and dressed immediately because your body temperature continues to drop (this is called “afterdrop”). Have a hot drink and move around to warm up.

Eventually, I discarded my wetsuit. I like the feeling of cold water on my skin. Other people clearly feel the same and wild swimming has increased dramatically since the start of the pandemic. In many parts of the world people couldn’t access indoor pools or gyms safely and they were also restricted by prolonged lockdowns, so they began swimming in local waterways which were cost-free, offered natural social distancing and were open 24/7. (A hardy few in the UK even filled wheelie bins with ice water.)

If open water swimming is the balm for depression and anxiety that many people (including me) find it to be, the exponential uptick is not surprising. A wild swim done safely, in good company or alone, is certainly a mood-lifter with the brain producing dopamine, the feel-good hormone. Cold water brings me into the moment. It’s a mental challenge: if I can do this, then other things feel less scary.

In early 2021 I decided I needed a few pool lessons. I felt a bit silly to start with, but soon learned how to breathe and swim at the same time, how to glide and turn in freestyle. I enjoyed my lessons, but swimming in a chlorinated blue rectangle didn’t compare to the limitless feel of the salty sea. There are no lanes and, unless I’m at a popular beach in the peak of summer,  few (or no) other people. But in nature, I’m never alone.

Treasures of the sea

Each summer I am surrounded by chains of salps, little jelly beans floating by and linked into streamers. A salp looks like a googly eye: a small clear body with a black dot inside (its digestive system). While swimming, my fingertips brush against them. They silently pass me underwater like tiny asteroids.

In late summer the moon jellyfish arrive, seemingly overnight. Saucer-shaped and translucent, with a purple underside and tentacles like angel-hair spaghetti. I try to dodge them as I swim; a friend told me one got caught down her togs once and I’d rather not have the same experience. Moon jellies have stingers, but they’re relatively mild.

Other marine creatures venture onto land. Last winter I almost trod on a leopard seal that was splayed across the stones at Seatoun Beach. She stirred and yawned, revealing huge jaws. There were scratches and scuff marks across her slim, spotted body from swimming 5,000km north of Antarctica. Leopard seals appear clumsy on land, but in the water they can zoom around at 40 kilometres per hour.

Forming connections

At first I’d imagined myself recruiting an army of ocean swimmers, but apart from calling me brave or crazy no one seemed particularly keen and I mostly continued alone. It wasn’t until winter 2021, when I attended a Matariki solstice swim, that a few of us exchanged phone numbers. A weekend swim group called Wāhine Wai was born in a sheltered cove on Miramar Peninsula, near Scorching Bay. The group has given me a routine, support and camaraderie. Swimming with them, I feel more relaxed in the sea.

Once a month we also pack thermoses of hot tea, torches and warm clothes to meet for a full moon swim at dusk, when the indigo sky deepens and the inky water stretches out before us. We bob around in the shallows beneath the pale moonshadow and the sea feels velvety, almost soft. We watch the stars emerge, flickering silver pinpricks of light.

A morning dippers’ group called Better Beach Babes has also formed on the peninsula. I first joined them in winter 2022 at Better Beach, a pebbled bay punctuated by rocks. In the pinky-orange dawn light we shed our clothes and stumbled into the sea. I felt half-asleep when I arrived, but my eyes widened as the cold water (about 10-12°C in winter) hit my ankles, then knees, waist, shoulders. With clenched teeth I persevered, muttering a few f-bombs.

But after the tough entry comes the euphoria, watching the sun rise over the Ōrongorongo mountains as the tide flows in and we float like feathers. It’s a fresh start.

The problem with Jaws

Whenever I’m swimming out of my depth and tread water for a moment, I’m aware of my legs dangling down as potential bait for a phantom predator.

I’m a child of the ‘80s, born a few years after Jaws’ theatrical release but I clearly remember watching it on TV as a kid. The scariest part for me wasn’t the (fake) shark, it was hearing the threatening theme music and knowing it was the cue for someone’s imminent, gory death. I hear that music in the sea and even in the damn pool, sometimes. The movie’s grim tagline, “You’ll never go in the water again”,  haunts me too.

Is my shark paranoia justified? There are 66 types of sharks (mangō) found in New Zealand waters, ranging in size from the pygmy shark (27cm) to the whale shark (12m). Since formal records began in 1852 there have been about 15 fatal shark attacks documented in Aotearoa.

What if we flipped the coin from how sharks treat us, to how we treat sharks? While listening to an episode of DOC’s Sounds of Science podcast with shark expert Clinton Duffy, I learned that up to 100 million sharks are caught annually by fisheries around the world. Sharks are also threatened by habitat destruction. The great white shark, which inspired our friend Jaws, is a protected species in New Zealand.

On the podcast, Duffy said something that intrigued me further: “The more you find out about sharks, the less of a monster [they become]. They’re absolutely beautiful animals.” I may never consider a shark to be “beautiful”, but my fist-clenching terror has abated somewhat. Sharks still cross my mind sometimes when I’m swimming, but the Jaws tagline was wrong; I get back in the water, every time.

Blue spaces

We need blue spaces and Taputeranga Marine Reserve, a protected coastal and marine area on Wellington’s South Coast, is one of our most special. While snorkelling there I float above lush underwater forests filled with orange anemones, pink starfish, rock lobsters and triplefins. Big-lipped blue cod weave through the kelp while huge pāua shine rainbows.

In such moments I feel humbled. I am a part of the ocean. My orbit around it feels gravitational, pulling ever stronger. At first, caught in that horrible vortex of depression and anxiety, I’d thought about what the sea could do for me. Now, I think: what can I do for the sea?

Open water swims can be about endurance, competing, or simply having a dip with friends. But the more I swim, the more I see. While swimming around the fountain at Oriental Bay on Sunday mornings, I often see rubbish scattered across Freyberg Beach and floating in the water. Heavy rain causes stormwater drains to overflow, resulting in “unsuitable for swimming” notices.

The ocean gives us so much, but we’re hurting it.

However, small changes have a ripple effect and there is a lot of important mahi happening in our blue backyard, such as Love Rimurimu, a restoration project for giant kelp (rimu kakauroa). Underwater kelp forests provide food and shelter for marine life, release oxygen, absorb carbon, improve water quality, and protect our coastlines from erosion.

Love Rimurimu recently set up an offshore seaweed pilot site on Miramar Peninsula to monitor the growth and health of giant kelp. One overcast spring day I visited the young kelp, feeling their tiny bubbles on my outstretched hands and watching the dancing fronds underwater with a sense of being suspended in time. These long brown streamers silently breathe new life.