Special Guest Ben Lecomte at AltaSea Open House

Alta Sea Open House

“Beginning next spring, if everything goes to plan, Lecomte will swim from Tokyo to San Francisco, a 5,500-mile trip expected to take six months. He will swim eight hours a day, then recuperate the rest of each day on The Discoverer, the 67-foot sailboat carrying his support team and supplies.

Along the way, Lecomte’s team will collect and store thousands of samples of ocean water and biometric data about Lecomte, on behalf of a variety of major science organizations researching the condition of the ocean and its impacts on sea life and humans.

To help kick off pre-swim preparations, Lecomte will be featured at the quarterly open house for AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles. The open house begins at 10 am, Sept. 16, at Berth 58 in the port, at 2456 S. Signal St. in San Pedro, Calif. It is open to the public, but reservations are required. Email RSVP@altasea.org by Sept. 11.

At the open house, Lecomte will be joined by Matthew Mulrennan, director of the Ocean Initiative for Lecomte sponsor the XPRIZE Foundation, and Capt. Charles Moore, founder and research director of Algalita Marine Research and Education. Moore has spent two decades researching the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a dead zone filled with countless tons of pulverized plastic particles and other flotsam left by humans around the planet.” David Bloom