I have always loved the water. I spent much of my childhood on
the River Arun in West Sussex, and the Stour near my school in
Dorset. Over the years I have been in and out of dozens of
rivers: wild swimming on the Norfolk Broads, or racing coracles
on the Wye in Wales. Last month I was lucky enough to row a
little three-man skiff down the Thames as part of the great
Diamond Jubilee river pageant. Swimming and diving in the sea
are passions of mine. But the beautiful, clear rivers and
sparkling seas we remember from childhood are more and more
under threat. Last year I joined an environmental expedition
into the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka with the Plastic Oceans
Foundation, to try to establish whether our marine litter is
affecting sea animals. Much has been made of the North Pacific
gyre, the plastic ''island’’ circulating between the US and
Hawaii. What is less known is that gyres exist in every ocean on
this planet. In the Indian Ocean, I was unlucky enough to swim
through one of these vast floating patches