San Diego Junior Lifeguards jumped from the Ocean Beach Pier into the Pacific Ocean on Monday.
Each kid that participates in the pier jump must know how to swim and have a pair of swim fins ready for their swim back to land, which can be up to 1,000 yards away. All the participants attended a safety class before the jump to make sure they were prepared.
Ten-year-old Colin Crowder is one of the hundreds of junior lifeguards who took the 40-foot leap of faith.
"It's really fun, but it can get really scary when you jump off and there's nothing below your feet," Crowder said. "Before I stepped off, my knees were really rattling. And when I was falling off, definitely lots of butterflies."
The annual pier jump raises money and awareness for drowning prevention programs, particularly in underserved communities.
"Ten, fifteen minutes from here, there's a whole host of communities that, not only do they not know how to swim, their parents don't know how to swim, and now pools aren't open for them to learn to swim," said Buc Buchanan, president of the Prevent Drowning Foundation of San Diego, which provides swimming lessons to children in those communities.
Families who need help gaining access to their resources are encouraged to fill out an interest form online.
