Mimi Hughes swims the Danube

In the summer of 2006, American Mimi Hughes spent 89 days swimming down the entire length of the Danube River from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, travelling an average 33 km per day. The 51-year old high school teacher and mother of four is the first person to swim the Danube without fins and only the second to attempt the feat at all.

“The Danube is an incredible river with a very diverse personality,” Mimi says. “It begins narrow and dynamic, and by the end it is wide, calm and tranquil.” She compares it to the Tennessee River, which she swam 2003. “The Tennessee River is so controlled, there is little to write home about,” she says, before adding with a grin, “but it does smell better than the Danube.”

The diversity is also reflected in the people that live on and around this most international river in the world. Her swim was filled with special people and personalities – like the old Serb fisherman in Serbia, who showed his appreciation to Mimi by giving her pictures of himself and his wife in their early 20’s. Or the poor Bulgarian communities along the Danube that competed with one another to offer what little they had in hospitality.

Pollution

Like the fish that swim the Danube, Mimi became intimately acquainted with the quality of the river’s water.

Fortunately, pollution from chemicals has improved over the past decade or two. The noxious chemicals in the Danube downstream of Rousse in Bulgaria which in the early 1990s were described by the author of a book used by Mimi to guide her swim are no longer such a problem, thanks to the collapse of Soviet industry and improved environmental controls along the river.

But biosolids – Mimi’s euphemistic expression for sewage – remain a major problem, especially downstream of Budapest and Belgrade, which still dump a significant amount of sewage into the river untreated, as well as in the lower Danube. Throughout the swim, Mimi took Cipro, an anti-biotic effective against E. Coli bacteria, and wore a full wetsuit, swimming cap, goggles and ear plugs. The situation should improve in coming years thanks to massive investments in wastewater treatment especially in the EU member states which make up the majority of Danube countries.

Mimi was also sensitive to changing water temperature, including the deluge of freezing water where the Alpine fed Inn River enters the Danube in Germany as well as the hot water experienced for a few kilometres downstream of the Cernavoda atomic power plant in Romania.

Like a sturgeon

“I began to understand what it must feel like to be a Sturgeon,” Mimi remarks about the dams that lacerate the Upper Danube. Dams – 59 of them on the upper half of the Danube – were a major obstacle, not so much for Mimi as much as her 1-person support crew: 21-year-old daughter Kelsey and their 17-foot, 150 kg kayak, laden with most everything needed by the two to survive for three months and 2,800 kilometers.

The dams are mainly for the purposes of hydropower and navigation, but they come at a high cost, especially for the Danube’s Sturgeon populations, whose migratory routes have been cut off. Long gone are the days when the giant Beluga sturgeon, which can reach the size of a small bus, migrated up the river as far as Vienna. Today, one species of Danube Sturgeon has already become extinct and four more are facing threat of extinction.

The most dangerous part of Mimi’s swim was on the Upper Danube in Austria and Slovakia, where flood waters created dangerous eddies and strudels. The flooding, caused by heavy snow melt and rains, was exacerbated by canalising of the river and loss of some 80% of its former floodplain areas, which normally serve to store and soak up regular flood waters.

Caring for the river

“Many people take the river for granted and may not realise that their actions, not just on or near the water, but anywhere in the watershed, can be harmful to the river,” Mimi added. “Whether it’s preventing soil erosion along streams or just helping keep trash and pollution out of the river, everyone can do something to help.”

In June 2007, Mimi Hughes swam the Drava River from Austria to Serbia. You can read more here.