Ocean City Man Trying to Keep the World Afloat

About 60 athletes spent Sunday morning swimming between orange buoys about 100 yards off the beach in Longport.

The group was comprised of triathletes and other competitors who welcome a chance to become more familiar with ocean swimming in an environment patrolled by lifeguards.

The Sunday morning open-water sessions are sponsored by the Ocean City Swim Club, which is led by Ocean City resident Bruckner Chase. The sessions are part of a global mission for Chase — to teach people how to respect, protect and enjoy the ocean.

Chase's mission takes him across the globe from Longport to Samoa.

"Some people think they know how to swim," Chase said.

But staying afloat in a pool is very different than staying safe in the ocean, he said. "It gives you a false sense of confidence."

A large part of Chase's work is being done in American Samoa, where he is using a Community Services Block Grant (through the American Samoa Department of Commerce) to help teach swimming on the island chain, where very few of the native people know how to swim and where 32 percent of the population is under age 18.

Chase's new program addresses three problems:

• People don't know how to swim.
• People don't know how to relax and stay afloat in moving water.
• People don't know how to watch the water for dangerous conditions and situations.

Public safety efforts in New Jersey focus largely on identifying and avoiding rip currents. But Chase said that focus addresses only one of the three primary issues. He believes people should know how to swim before they enter an ocean filled with moving water — on any day at any location.

The "Toa O Le Tai" (Warriors of the Ocean) program is going strong this summer on American Samoa.

Chase has visited the island for various one-month stints to set up the training program for youth ages 12 to 21. He visited most recently in May — along with his wife, Michelle, and Ocean City C-Cerpants swim coach Graham Parker — to train the paid Samoan instructors who will sustain the program. They also taught a mobile fire department rescue unit.

Four instructors are now leading open water workouts and lifeguard skills training sessions three days a week. The program aims to train the next generation of Samoans in swimming and ocean awareness skills to help reverse a cultural fear of swimming in deep water.

One of Chase's biggest success stories is "Tank," an instructor with the same first and last names, Alesana Alesana.

Slender and muscular, Tank looks the part of "Baywatch," but a year ago he wouldn't dare enter water over his head, Chase said. Tank embraced the Toa O Le Tai program and is now one of its leaders.

Tank was part of a 13-member relay of Samoan swimmers that completed a nine-mile open-water crossing from an outlying island (Aunu'u) to Pago Pago, the main harbor on American Samoa.

The Samoans took turns swimming and were surrounded by a small flotilla of water craft, but a swimming feat of that magnitude would have been unthinkable for Tank and for his teammates before the start of the new program.

"It's about empowering American Samoans to realize what they're capable of," Chase said.

Chase, a 46-year-old Bay Avenue resident in Ocean City, hopes to see the same empowerment in the local athletes who train on Sunday mornings and in the Special Olympics athletes he trains.

Chase's swimming career was first inspired by  when he was 9 years old. And he hopes to help other people avoid that potential tragedy.

To learn more about how you can help fund similar programs, visit the website for the Legion of Ocean Heroes.