What It’s Like to Swim in an Ocean That’s 100 Degrees

For a moment, as I followed the stories of this summer’s devastating global heat wave, I found it hard to accept that our climate crisis has already become this catastrophic. The tragedies in Greece. The unrelenting, monthlong, historic high temperatures through wide corridors of the United States. The emerging forecasts that none of this is likely to be an aberration.

Then, a few weeks ago, the ocean temperature off Miami hit 95 degrees. A visceral alarm gripped my entire being. I kept repeating the number in stunned disbelief. It couldn’t possibly hold, I told myself — and it didn’t. By the end of the month, at least one reading had soared past 100 degrees.

Through all recorded time on Earth, humans have stood at the ocean’s edge, gazing out at the horizon, in awe of the blue jewel we call home. Even from their vantage point a quarter million miles away, astronauts have expressed sheer wonder at the sight of our special pale blue dot, as Carl Sagan so eloquently put it.

Yet in recent weeks that blue dot has been suffering through a climate calamity most of us simply weren’t prepared for. Yes, we’ve read about the accumulation of greenhouse gases that are warming our atmosphere. But I dare say, for many of us, the radical heating of our oceans is a frightening new juncture in human history that has gone largely unnoticed.

Millions of people dating back to ancient days have waded and bobbed and frolicked close to shore for exercise, peace and pleasure and to connect with perhaps the grandest of all of Mother Nature’s majestic features. But to step into the water off Miami late last month was akin to stepping into a hot Jacuzzi, the antithesis of refreshing and inspiring. Years from now, we may well remember the summer of 2023 as the beginning of an era when many of our oceans stopped serving as a glorious place of recreation.

My childhood was spent in the very waters off the Florida coast that recently registered temperatures in the triple digits. I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, and the memories that loom largest are oceanic — spending all day splashing in the surf, laughing with my brother and sister, dunking one another, riding waves and playing endless underwater games, racing out to this or that buoy, flopping into bed at night exhausted and exhilarated by the magic caress of our irreplaceable backyard playground.