Catherine Breed is attempting something no one has ever accomplished: swimming the entire length of California. Well, from Oregon to Mexico, to be exact.
Apparently, spending several hours a day in the Pacific isn’t enough excitement.
Breed, a 33-year-old marathon swimmer from Mill Valley, began her roughly 900-mile journey at the Oregon border on July 1. The goal is to reach Mexico after connecting the entire California coastline through a series of consecutive open-water stages.
Shark documentarian Carlos Gauna — better known as The Malibu Artist — recently joined Breed on Day 89, documenting an entire 10-mile leg from behind the scenes.
Gauna’s film follows the remarkably repetitive grind: Breed swimming stroke after stroke alongside her support boat while crew members navigate, document her position and provide fuel. She is fed approximately every 30 minutes, typically with carbohydrate drinks or endurance gels, without touching the support vessel.
It is very much not a solo operation.
“This is just such a team event,” Breed recently said. Her crew records GPS coordinates and photographic evidence throughout each swim so the unprecedented attempt can eventually be ratified.
Then things get especially interesting.
“After the swim, we went searching for great white sharks,” Gauna explains in the video description, “and found exactly what we were hoping for.”
Drone footage soon reveals the unmistakable silhouette of a white shark cruising beneath the surface — precisely the animal many people have spent months asking Breed about.
Within minutes, the ocean delivered. Using his drone, Gauna guided the crew right to the sharks. “Oh my god… we’re totally being circled,” Breed marveled as a juvenile great white curiously investigated their small boat. In just 20 minutes, the crew spotted three different great whites, dropping an underwater camera to capture up-close footage of the sharks.
Related: Watch: Great White Shark Turns Nantucket Shallows into a Bloodbath
Sharks, of course, are only one component of the undertaking. Breed also faces cold water, currents, wind, fog, jellyfish, remote stretches of coastline, and the accumulated physical damage of swimming day after day. Her target is generally about 10 miles per day.
And the journey is about more than a record.
“I grew up on this coastline, I love it so much,” Breed said, explaining that the expedition is intended to promote ocean conservation and encourage women and girls to chase ambitious goals.
Gauna calls it “one of the most ambitious open-water swimming journeys” happening on the California coast.
The great white was simply a reminder of exactly what Breed is swimming through.
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