Immediately after being dropped in by a helicopter, Stratte-McClure raised his distress flag and begged to be removed from the fetid waters off Imperial Beach. “My goal was to foster improved relations between the United States and Mexico when it came to tackling this bi-national problem, a problem which truly knows no borders. I see now that I was hopelessly naive. We should absolutely invade and take control of the problem at its source. The horror of war could not possibly match what I just experienced.”

In 1976, American Joel Stratte-McClure swam across Paris’ Seine river for a cover story in his magazine The Paris Metro. Two weeks ago, he returned to that precise spot and repeated the feat in an effort to draw attention to the drama surrounding recent clean-up efforts in the famous waterway. Specifically, both French President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo have promised to take swims in the river, by way of signaling the success of their efforts to prepare the river for swimmers competing in this summer’s Olympic Games, but have so far failed to keep their promises, even as they boast of the river’s safety. Following the tremendous response his stunt received via social media, Stratte-McClure began casting about for a follow-up. “Sequels always have to be bigger,” he explained, “so I knew I would have to swim in even more famously polluted waters, waters that were being even more blatantly ignored by the governments responsible for their upkeep. Imperial Beach was kind of a no-brainer. Thirty-one billion gallons of water polluted with raw sewage since October of last year, and no sign of stopping. Beaches closed, whole communities sickened. I wanted to do something that would help improve peoples’ lives. But I fear I may have done nothing except wreck my own. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to lie down.”