The Mangrove Man (2009)

He was 900 kilometers out to sea when the tuna first jumped.

A flash of silver. A fan of salt spray. It arced high above his kayak and vanished behind his paddle. Ryan de Jongh blinked against the sun. Maybe he imagined it. Ten days alone on the ocean did strange things to the mind.

He lowered his head and kept paddling.

The journey was 2800 kilometers. Every movement was measured. He had to keep his mind still, steady. Each paddle stroke pushed him 2.5 meters closer. He paddled ten hours a day. Counted 1,500 strokes an hour. By his calculation, it would take over one and a half million strokes to reach Willemstad.

From St. Maarten, Ryan had paddle south down the Antilles archipelago passing St. Kitts, Montserrat and Guadeloupe. He was approaching Grenada where he would turn west across La Blanquilla Island and the barren Los Roques archipelago to Curacao.

The sea stretched endlessly in every direction. No land. No boats. Just the sun, and the dark blue beneath him. The wind and waves were picking up and his kayak climbed the swells

Each stroke, he told himself, was like planting a tree.

It was a comforting thought. He remembered June 15th, 2006, when he snuck into the lagoon near Rif and planted a single mangrove seedling. No one asked him to. He just knew it was right. Quietly, he returned the next day. Then the next. He planted hundreds. Thousands. The Dutch press would later call him Mangrove Man. They said he’d planted over 100,000 trees. But Ryan didn’t count trees. He just did the work.

That night the tuna jumped again. This time closer.

It was a Thunnus albacares—a yellowfin tuna—nearly 200 kilograms, slicing through the sea like a living blade. The king of the Caribbean.

Why was it following him?

Ryan thought of something his old karate teacher once said:

“You don’t need ten thousand moves.
Just one. But one move practiced ten thousand times."

So Ryan paddled. The tuna swam.

It dove deep, then surfaced again, always near. Its body shimmered like moonlight on a blade. Ryan squinted into the burning sky. Was it real? Or a mirage from the sun?

But the fish felt real. As real as the ache in his shoulders. As real as the purpose in his heart.

He thought about the mangroves. Their roots tangled in the shallows, holding the shore together. They took 15 years to mature. They took one minute to cut down.

Ryan had devoted his life to explaining to people that mangroves are nature’s guardians—protecting coastlines, cleaning the water, and sheltering life. Crabs, shrimp, little fish—entire lives began in their hidden roots. The baby fish grow there, safe from the jaws in the deeper sea. When they are strong enough, they leave the mangroves. They entered the open sea.

Without the mangroves, there would be no baby fish. No fish to feed the hunters of the deep. No tuna. No Curaçao.

He looked down into the shadowy blue below his boat.

“You’re not just a fish,” he whispered. “You’re the forest.”

He set his paddle down. Closed his eyes. Let the kayak drift.

The tuna circled once. Slowly. Silently. Then vanished into the deep. It did not return.

Ten days later in the evening, Ryan arrived in Curaçao.

A group of children was waiting on the shore. Each one held a small mangrove sapling in their hands. Their feet sank into the wet earth, the same way the trees would. The way stories do.

Ryan smiled.

The forest would grow in Curaçao. The sea and his tuna would stay alive. And the journey—stroke by stroke, tree by tree—was only beginning.