Swimming in pitch darkness, Neil Agius tried to swat away the jellyfish that kept stinging him as he swam from Mallorca to Ibiza.

“Stings on stings on stings. I was just moving jellyfish out of the way…. dodging, dodging, getting stung, going on,” Agius recalled on Tuesday evening, hours after he was forced to abandon a world record swim attempt.

It was 1am when the jellyfish first struck, stinging him “eight or nine times” within an instant.

His support team, which was monitoring him from a nearby rhib, lit up the area. Agius ducked underwater and realised he was in trouble.

“It was full. I felt like I was in an aquarium of jellyfish,” Agius said in a video he posted from Mallorca, where he and his team returned after calling off the attempted swim.

The stings kept coming. In the immediate aftermath of the swim, Agius estimated that he had been stung “around 60 times”. He says that’s a very conservative estimate.

“I think it was way more than that – I couldn’t feel my hands, my wrists, my forearms. My legs are still swollen.”

Three boats moved ahead of him to try and find a path that would spare him the jellyfish pain and allow him to continue the swim. None could find a way out.

At around 4am, and after three hours of being trapped in a seemingly never-ended swarm of jellyfish, Agius decided to call the swim off. 

A growing problem across the Mediterranean

Jellyfish blooms have been multiplying across the Mediterranean in recent years. Many experts say that’s most likely due to two key factors: rising sea temperatures which encourage them to multiply, and overfishing which has left jellyfish with fewer predators and competitors.

The increase in jellyfish numbers is considered so significant – and unlikely to subside – that the EU has decided to pump research funding into a project that seeks to identify ways in which humans can make use of the sea creatures, from turning them into food to using them as fertilizers. 

Agius’ world-record swim attempt, like all his other record-breaking swims, was intended to drum up awareness about the fragility of the world’s oceans and seas, and the damage humans are doing to them.

The multiplying jellyfish blooms that forced him out of the water are one sign that the sea's ecological balance is teetering. 

The irony was not lost on him.

“We’re the cause of all this,” he mused on Tuesday evening.  “We’re not going to be able to enjoy the ocean unless we make changes.”

Some wellwishers wondered why Agius didn’t opt to wear a wetsuit, to better protect him from the jellyfish stings. The answer is that he was not allowed to do so.

Rules set by the Marathon Swimming Federation for an unassisted current-neutral swim – the record Agius was trying to break – state that swimmers can only wear a swimsuit, cap and goggles during their swim.

Agius couldn’t even wear a smartwatch and instead relied on a basic Casio watch to keep track of the time.

The swimmer spent around 10 months preparing mentally and physically for the swim that was cut short by something outside of his control, and he acknowledged that it will take some time to digest the disappointment.

But the setback has not killed his spirit.

“I don’t regret anything,” he said as he looked forward to having another go at the swim in the future.

“I feel this is something that I can achieve. I’ve got unfinished business.”