SURF COUNTY USA : Surfers Look Beyond Next Wave to Concern for Ocean Environment

Despite their reputation as hedonistic individuals, surfers are becoming increasingly involved in a wide-ranging effort to protect the ocean from pollution and development.

In Orange County, the growing social awareness has been channeled into the Surfrider Foundation based in Huntington Beach, a city that former surfing champion Corky Carroll once called the brain of surfing.

Surfrider now has at least 4,000 dues-paying members, from individual surfers to members of corporations, who provide $200,000 to $300,000 a year--enough to jump into a number of environmental controversies from San Diego to Humboldt County.

“There is a graying of the sport,” said Steve Pezman, publisher of Surfer Magazine, who sits on the foundation’s advisory board. “We are becoming more responsible, and this is pay-back for a sport that has been so good to us.”

The roll of the foundation’s advisory board reads like a who’s who of surfing. It includes world champions Tom Curren, Jericho Poppler Bartlow and Robert Nat Young. Bruce Brown, maker of the movie “Endless Summer,” and Walter Hoffman, a pioneer of the surf-wear industry, also are on the list, as well as representatives of major manufacturers and surfing associations.

Longtime surfing enthusiasts attribute their increased consciousness to deteriorating beach conditions, particularly in Southern California, where sewage and oil spills have repeatedly closed beaches and where development threatens dwindling wetlands.

Surfrider was founded by a handful of Malibu surfers in 1984. During the first year of operation, the nascent organization flew by the seat of its swim trunks. It had fewer than 200 members and so little money that then-director Tom Pratte could not cash his paychecks.

Robert W. Caughlan, president of the board of directors, said he initially thought it would be extremely difficult to organize surfers because the sport was populated with loners and individualists. But, he said, surfing was linked to a multibillion-dollar industry with a vested interest in a clean environment, and that worked on Surfrider’s behalf.

“We have had good fund-raising, and manufacturers have been supportive of us,” Caughlan said. “They have come on full force, and it has helped us get some notches on our gun.”

In 1985, Surfrider undertook a successful legal fight to block a mile-long breakwater proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers off Imperial Beach in San Diego County. The group claimed the project would cause severe beach erosion.

Next, the foundation, along with several other environmental groups, halted another Army Corps of Engineers project to build a breakwater and marina at Bolsa Chica, one of the last stretches of virgin beach and wetlands in Orange County.

“We thought we were going to get our butts kicked,” said Caughlan, a longtime environmentalist and former aide to President Jimmy Carter. “We fought it on economic grounds. Why should the public pick up a $200-million tab so a developer can get rich?”

Last year, the foundation successfully negotiated with private landowners to provide public access to the historic Hammond’s Reef surfing beach in Santa Barbara.

On a smaller scale, Surfrider has taken out full-page ads encouraging surfers to register to vote and to vote with a “green” attitude. The organization has also told its flock to get in touch with the League of Conservation Voters and has kept copious notes on the environmental records of elected officials.

Surfrider is now engaged in lawsuits against two pulp-mill operators in Humboldt County who have allegedly pumped pollutants into the ocean.

The foundation has also been monitoring a sewage plant in San Diego, a Chevron USA rock jetty in El Segundo and plans for a hydropower plant in Honolii, Hawaii.

In another controversial move, the foundation is trying to increase access to “The Ranch” north of Santa Barbara. It is hallowed surfing ground where access is severely restricted by a host of landowners, many of whom surf and fear crowded conditions.

Foundation officials say the situation is tantamount to having a private beach. The Ranch’s high-quality waves can be reached by boat or land if the surfer is fortunate enough to know a property owner. Saboteurs often jam the winch at the boat launch outside Goleta to deter surfers from entering the area.

On the local level, the foundation’s new director, Scott A. Jenkins, a research oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, has proposed a “Blue Water Task Force”--surfing’s equivalent of Neighborhood Watch.

The plan calls for surfers to be on the lookout for water quality violations--such as runoff, oil spills, sewage and dredge spoils--at their surfing areas. Anything suspicious would be reported to the Surfrider Foundation for investigation by the group. If pollution is found, litigation would be filed or other appropriate action taken to remedy the problem.

But what concerns Caughlan more is the Bush Administration’s position on offshore oil drilling. While oil exploration and new wells have been postponed in the Los Angeles area, he said, more leases are being granted in the Santa Barbara and Santa Maria area.

“The Administration ought to talk to the surfers up there,” Caughlan said. “George Bush can read their lips.”