@ksbw_8: Mill Valley resident Catherine Breed has finished her roughly 900-mile swim of California’s entire coast. To achieve this unprecedented feat, the 33-year-old swam through open water for about five to eight hours per day — and faced an unexpected foe. Since starting at the Oregon border in July, Breed experienced this year’s historic El Niño changing the Pacific Ocean in real time. She shared what she witnessed and how El Niño complicated her team’s journey with SFGATE on Saturday afternoon, two days before her ceremonial finish. In this conversation, Breed voiced concern about a surprising current, which seemingly flowed north as she attempted to travel south. Josh Willis, a senior research scientist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told SFGATE that El Niño has not changed the far offshore California Current, which flows north to south, but he had another theory. “Near shore, there is a small coastal jet that also goes from north to south most summers, driven really by the upwelling and the winds near shore,” Willis wrote via email. “But during an El Niño year, those upwelling winds tend to reverse and the coastal jet can stop or reverse as well. This is probably what Catherine was experiencing.”

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Wednesday 21 October 2026 00:07:55 GMT