Inside the Tech behind Jono Ridler's historic Swim4TheOcean

by Jodie Bakewell-White - Live Ocean Racing 19 May 23:17 NZST

When Jono Ridler completed the longest unassisted staged swim in history on 4 April, millions of people around the world didn't just hear about it – they watched it happen in real time.

Behind that experience was PredictWind, whose live tracking and marine forecasting powered the Swim4TheOcean campaign from the first stroke to the last.

Swim4TheOcean saw Ridler swim 1,367km (approx. 850 miles) down the east coast of New Zealand's North Island over 90 days, without a wetsuit. The mission, developed in partnership with marine conservation foundation Live Ocean, carried a clear call to end bottom trawling on New Zealand's seamounts.

The swim, live

PredictWind's live tracker on Swim4TheOcean.org brought Jono's record-breaking swim to the world. Updated continuously throughout the mission, the tracker showed Ridler's exact location, pace, distance covered, and the sea and weather conditions he was facing, giving followers the feeling of being right there with him. Audiences tuned in from across the globe, led by New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.

"We always knew the live tracker was going to be a big part of bringing people along on the journey with Jono and helping people feel connected to the mission. Huge thanks to PredictWind for making that possible – delivering a world-class tracker with the live weather, speed and distance data alongside the stories and content that helped people follow the swim in real time and became a big part of why the campaign connected with so many New Zealanders." – Blair Tuke, Live Ocean Co-Founder.

Key stats from the campaign

The swim generated remarkable numbers:

• 1,426,500 strokes, the equivalent of 27,340 lengths of an Olympic pool
• 468 hours 23 minutes spent in the water across 90 days
• 4.48 million Live Ocean page views and almost 300,000 unique visitors
• 73,647 signatures on the call to end bottom trawling

Beyond the tracker, the team relied on PredictWind's weather and current forecasting to plan and adjust every swim leg in real time, while a Datahub managed data transmission from the support vessels – ensuring a continuous record of every kilometre of the attempt.

“We are incredibly proud to have supported Jono and the Live Ocean team on such a meaningful mission for our oceans,” says Jon Bilger, Founder of PredictWind. “Our goal was to make sure that anyone, anywhere in the world, could follow every stroke of Jono’s journey in real time. The tracker levelled up the entire experience, bringing people closer to both the swim and the cause behind it.”

The same live tracking and marine forecasting technology that powered Swim4TheOcean is available to all PredictWind users - giving ocean goers around the world access to the same tools that kept Jono on course for 90 days. To find out more, visit www.predictwind.com.

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