We recently posted about Ross Edgley, who became the first person to swim around Great Britain. He is not, however, the only long-distance swimmer to have been on an epic voyage. Last June, we posted about Ben Lecomte who began an attempt to swim across the Pacific Ocean. The expedition was initially delayed by typhoons and had to turn back in July, taking a 20-day break before restarting. Swimming from Japan toward the United States, Lecomte has swum more than 1,200 nautical miles so far, and is roughly a third of the way across the mighty ocean.

Now, more than 150 days into the expedition, Lecomte has been swimming up to eight hours a day, weather permitting. After each day’s swim, Lecomte eats and sleeps aboard the support boat, a 20-meter sailboat, called Seeker. Lecomte is supported by a crew of eight and is performing a “staged swim” (resuming the swim in the exact location in which he left the water) using a GPS tracking device, enabling him to accurately track the number of miles he completes thus enabling him to reach a new world record in open water swimming.

Lecomte reports encountering considerable floating plastic during his swim. “I have seen the amount of plastic washing up on the beaches rising at an alarming rate over the past 30 years of swimming,” Lecomte told Kaleigh Rogers of Vice.com in a phone interview before he set out for his daily swim. “This has been a big eye-opener because I’m seeing a big amount of plastic on the surface of the water everywhere—by the coast but also 1,000 miles out.”