Joe Rogan - Ross Edgley's Amazing Story of Swimming With a Whale

But you developed a more efficient slower style that you could continue for five months. Yeah. And you just end up it's like moving meditation. It just became like, you know, the limiting factor was just like I was just getting bored. I wasn't actually breathing. What are you thinking of? This is the thing. I mean, you had to at any given time, any tide, you had to think of something that was going to be more powerful than the thought of stopping or fatigue or seals is like getting deeper into your skin. And so sometimes it was real easy because you were swimming with dolphins, minke whales. I swam with a basking shark. Did they come over to you going, what the fuck is this dude doing? Yeah. Like one point. Really? Yeah. There's a video over ages ago with the the minke whale and the I was swimming 12 hours across the Bristol channel. So that's kind of England to Wales. And this was this was without doubt for all the hardship that I spoke about. I just want to say that there were some amazing moments. This one particular moment, swimming across the Bristol channel, and all of a sudden minke whale kind of about as big as this table breaches right next to me. I was like, Whoa, like to me, I turned to Matt the captain. I was like, Matt, am I safe? Like what's going on? Like, shall I get out of the war? And he said, No, no, no, you're absolutely fine. And I was like, okay, because it's a minke whale. They're fine. They're friendly. I was like, Okay, fair enough. So I keep swimming. And then for the next five miles, the minke whale was circling me. It was breaching over the top. It was coming under me and swimming like that. I turned to Matt. I said like, Matt, what's going on? And he said, I've never seen this. He's been sailing like 40 years. He says, I've never seen this. He said, but what I think is happening is I think it's a female. And I'm trying to fuck you. Well, I said, it's not mating season. He was like, no, no, no, no, no, it's fine. He goes, what I think is saving you for later. This motherfucker. There you go. Look at him. I've seen him for four months in this water. I'm gonna fuck him. Mating season is probably right around the corner. She's like, if he sticks around, I'm gonna move on. So I know, I was like, you know, what is that? That was a concern of mine. Yeah. That was a good, yeah. And no, Matt said, no, no, no, I think it's a female. I think that she thinks that you're an injured seal. And so for the next five miles, she basically guided me all the way to the shallow water. And as I got there, it was literally the depth of the water. Matt said, yeah, yeah, much shallower water. And we turned, whale breached one more time. And then, and then swam off as if to say, you know, you're safe now. Wow. Amazing. That's incredible. Amazing. Yeah. So for all of the hardship and everything that I described, there were moments and sunsets and, and, and swimming with seals and, and it was amazing. Whoa. So that's the basking shark. Is that what you encountered? Yeah. So that was in the, that's the actual one you encountered. I don't know if I can't, I mean, I was swimming behind. Seems like you could swim in that. I was, I was concerned about that one, but no, so that's a basking shark. So they're friendly, but the map, can you imagine seeing that like swimming through Scotland, like mountains, either side of you. And so, so to your point about asking what you think about, it's very easy to swim when, when, you know, there's dolphins and everything, but there's times when you are lost in this moving meditation, but then you see something like that and you very quickly got to get your wits about you. Yeah. Because there were killer whales as well up, you know, coming from sort of Iceland around the top of, of Scotland. So that was, that was a concern. Were they interested in you? Thankfully we didn't see any, but they wouldn't attack you or anything. Well, so this is it. So we were speaking with marine biologists at the time saying, look like what's, what's the situation here? And they said, well, you know, what's really interesting, they're so intelligent, you know, killer whales are so, so intelligent. And they've never been known. This was what they said to me. They've never been known in, in the wild to attack a human. And I said, okay, fantastic. And they said, however, if they're going to attack a human, it's probably going to be you because no one's ever spent that amount of time in the water as well. You know, so I was like, right. They said, all you need to do right. So I was like, all right, comforting. So they just said, look, all you need to do is make sure that you don't look like a seal because they might mistake you for a seal, but they might bite you. But then they will go, Oh, well, that intelligent, they'll be like, Oh, that doesn't taste like a seal. So they might, you know, so I was just trying my best not to look like a seal. Well, I think when they've attacked people in the wild, though, it's always in the in captivity, it's always been trainers. Yeah, it's always been anger, frustration. Yeah. You know, and that was my experience with the minky one. Everything it was, people said, like, how do you swim at night? Because certainly around west of Scotland, there was it was a depth of 200 meters. So you just you can't you don't know what's under you. So there was that element. But I think having swum with the minky well around the Bristol Channel, I was very aware that in the hierarchy of the sea, I was very low down the pecking order. And if it's comforting in any strange way, I was like, look, if I was going to be eaten, I'll be eaten in the day just as much as I'll be eaten at night. Right. You know, it's just it's just one of those darkness. Yeah, yeah. Just like you can't you can't see the hand in front of your face. It's like the Moray Firth, for instance, we were like 40 miles away from land and this kind of cutting across this huge bay across the top of Scotland. And it was clouded over. So there was not you couldn't even see anything because there was no moonlight or no stars. And it was you in that complete sensory deprivation, you can hear everything. And it's just if you hear a noise, a ripple, you're like, I really hope that's not a killer whale. But then you've then got six hours to contemplate my presence. So it's this. And again, like I said, Marcus Aurelius, meditation stoic philosophy, that the conversations you have in your own head are just as powerful with other people. And I certainly found that all the way around that you just there was times when you were just like, what am I doing out here? Like seriously. And that comes from I think, you know, this this idea of you have to be doing it for the right reasons.