On Sunday morning, under gray spring skies, the North Fork Polar Bears took their final weekly plunge of the season before heading into summer ice-olation.
The intrepid band of cold plunge enthusiasts who meet at an Orient beach each Sunday morning from mid-October until mid-May was founded in 2020 with just three people. By New Year’s Day, 2021, there were 10. Now more there are more than 140 Polar Bears on the group’s lively WhatsApp channel, an extensive email list for those who are curious but are not yet ready to dive in ([email protected]) and an Instagram account with more than 1200 followers.
This season the North Fork Polar Bears have seen their highest numbers ever, said Dafydd Snowdon-Jones, who founded the group with his partner Patricia Garcia-Gomez.
“Last year, we’d get maybe 10 or 12 people each Sunday morning, he said. “This winter we’ve had up to 30 people on Sunday at 10 o’clock, religiously.
“But it’s also about the relationships that came out of this,” he continued. “There are lots of new friendships where people never would have met because they’re in different circles. Even physical relationships — there are now several couples that were born out of the Polar Bears that never would have met. So you create a community, and it’s the birth of something special.”
Mr. Snowdon-Jones said that there’s nearly always a curious new recruit each week.
“New polar bears are born all the time.” (This seaon’s new converts include this reporter.)
Mr. Snowdon-Jones attributes the success of the rapidly-expanding group to cold water immersion itself.
“I guess it’s contagious. People are curious. They say, ‘I wonder what that’s like.’ And at some point, they’ll meet someone who’s like, ‘I’ve done that. You’ll love it.’ And that’s all they need. They come prepared, they go in and it’s just life-changing.”
With its growing numbers, the group is branching out and giving back.
In early 2023, the Polar Bears held a cold plunge fundraiser for Southold-based CAST [Center for Advocacy, Support and Transformation] that drew more than 200 swimmers and raised $50,000.
This year’s fundraiser at the Silver Sands Motel and Beach Bungalows in Greenport — which added the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Back to the Bays marine program as a beneficiary along with CAST — raised nearly $100,000.
That success is allowing the group to “give back to the water that we all enjoy so much,” as Ms. Garcia-Gomez put it.
“We’re scouting locations now, but this summer we’ll have a North Fork Polar Bears-dedicated marine site of ocean restoration, and by late summer we’ll be able to plant eel grass. We’ll add more and more restoration each year.”
Eel grass cleans coastal waters by absorbing nutrients and trapping fine sediment, supports marine life, produces oxygen and absorbs climate-warming carbon, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Ms. Garcia-Gomez has big plans ahead for the group’s charitable work.
“This year, our money is research and planting. Next year, we’ll go beyond planting and then maybe get into cultivating seafood like oysters and scallops and sea horses.”
Another welcome new addition this season to the weekly ritual is a portable sauna, which pulls right up to the beach — allowing group members to alternate between cold plunges and hot sauna visits. Bunji Box Saunas, a local, family-owned which rents out the mobile units, has been donating one of their wood-burning cedar barrel saunas to the Polar Bears once a month.
“Everybody just loves it,” Mr. Snowdon-Jones said.
The Bunji Box sauna has also been turning up for a little-known subset of the North Fork Polar Bears, comprised of a group of women who night swim under full moons.
“I love night swimming and I love swimming under full moons,” Mr. Garcia-Gomez said. “And I love saunas and I love rituals, where I get to have women come together, especially women that I want to bond with. I’ve done it twice already but I want to do it every full moon from now on through the whole year.
“I love the contrast of the cold, which is constricting, and the hot, which is expanding — and then you just get this magical feeling throughout your body.”