As part of his mission to protect threatened waterways, Christopher Swain became the first person in history to swim the entire lengths of the Columbia, Charles, Hudson, Mohawk, Mystic, East, and Boise Rivers, as well as the entire lengths of Lake Champlain, the Gowanus Canal, Newtown Creek, Long Island Sound, and Narragansett Bay.
During his swims, Swain has survived collisions with boats, 12-foot waves, lightning storms, class V rapids, waterfalls, logjams, toxic blue-green algae, oil slicks, raw sewage spills, blood-sucking Lamprey Eels, Great White Shark habitats, and water laced with arsenic, cyanide, dioxin, coal tar residue, radioactive waste, PCBs and neuro-toxic pesticides.
Over the last two decades, Swain has worked with over 80,000 North American schoolchildren, and stories about his environmental efforts have reached a worldwide media audience of more than four billion people.
Honors and Awards
In March 2003, Swain received an International Earth Day Award from the Earth Society at United Nations Headquarters in New York City.
Later that year, he received an e-chievement Award on National Public Radio’s e-town.
In 2004, he was elected to the Men's Journal Adventure Hall of Fame, and was featured as Person of the Week on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
In 2005, at the invitation of United Nations staff, Swain designed, produced, and emceed a launch event for the United Nations Decade of Action Water For Life 2005-2015, at U.N. Headquarters in New York City. The event, called BLESSING OF THE WATERS, brought together representatives from every major religion, and indigenous peoples from around the globe, to offer their prayers and blessings for the world's waters.
In 2006, Swain became the youngest of twenty-one conservationists profiled in Rachel White Scheuring's book, Shapers of the Great Debate on Conservation: A Biographical Dictionary.
In 2007, Swain received the Harry E. Schlenz Public Education Medal from the Water Environment Federation, and was featured in the International Swimming Hall Of Fame book, Swimmers: Courage & Triumph.