Berkeley teen completes 21-mile North Channel swim

BERKELEY — For Berkeley native Maya Merhige, swimming is about exploration.

After a 21.4-mile trek between Ireland and Scotland known as the North Channel on July 8, the 18-year-old ultramarathon swimmer is now celebrating her latest major challenge – one that took just over 12 hours to complete.

Merhige got her start in the water at a young age. Adamant that she would play some kind of sport, Merhige said her parents had her try everything. Swimming was the sport she hated least.

“I used to have a tantrum when my parents would drive me to swim practice. I’d hide in the locker room, and was known as a kid that had to be picked up because I would go hide,” Merhige said.

It wasn’t until Merhige discovered open-water swimming, a sport her parents did for years, that she found her stride. Drawn in by the possibility of spotting whales, Merhige wanted to experience unique opportunities and explore nature and various cultures.

The sport has taken her from the shores of San Francisco and Lake Tahoe to New Zealand and Manhattan, and enabled her to raise $172,000 for cancer research through the organization Swim Across America.

Across hundreds of miles in total, Merhige has braved chilling temperatures, strong winds, powerful tides, close calls with sharks and countless jellyfish stings, and still she persisted.

At 13, Merhige became the youngest woman to swim the width of Lake Tahoe. After later swimming the length and diagonal of the lake, she also became the youngest person to complete the Lake Tahoe Triple Crown.

By 15, Merhige became the youngest person to solo swim the Molokai Channel, a roughly 27-mile stretch between Hawaii’s Oahu and Molokai islands. She still holds that record today, according to the Kaiwi Channel Association, the official group that governs the swim.

The Molokai and North channels help make up the Oceans Seven, a collection of some of the most challenging open-water routes across the world. Merhige has swam five of the seven, including the Cook Strait and the Catalina and English channels.

She’s scheduled to swim the sixth route, the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain to Morocco, in August, and plans to complete the last, Tsugaru Strait in Japan, in 2027.

She’s on track to becoming the youngest person in history to complete the Oceans Seven, a record currently held by fellow ultramarathon swimmer Caitlin O’Reilly, who earned the achievement at 20 years old.

Outside the Oceans Seven, Merhige said she has a long list of other swim goals that inevitably grows anytime she finds herself near a new body of water.

“I’m a pretty driven person. I like having goals for myself,” Merhige said. “It’s not about doing harder swims each time. It’s about wanting to travel to places and see the people there and what’s there. Every swim is a different challenge.”

But Merhige’s ambitions extend beyond the water.

The Georgetown University student is on a pre-med track, majoring in both sociology and psychology. Though her academics have always been a top priority, Merhige said she imagines she’ll eventually put more of her focus toward her career.

That balancing act is something she’s already learning to master. For much of her first year in college, Merhige said she hardly found herself in the water, instead prioritizing school, friends and family time.

In a sport where mental fortitude is vital, checking in with herself is second nature for Merhige and preventing burnout is a core objective. And while swimming is a beloved passion, it’s not all she is, she said.

“I do this because I love it. But it’s a hobby,” Merhige said. “It’s made me who I am but it’s not who I am.”