Search for the Perfect--and Clean--Wave : Surfers’ Entry Into Environmental Activism Adds Muscle to Efforts to Protect Coast

Concerned about the state of the ocean, many surfers have shed their cool-dude images and gotten involved in cleaning up the coastline. These “eco-surfers” have discovered a secret of activism: The best way to get things done about what you care about is to do them yourself. Their efforts provide a model for other sports enthusiasts and help focus attention on water quality, development and other problems that affect what is perhaps California’s greatest natural asset.

Orange County is home to the most prominent of all environmental surfing organizations, the Surfriders Foundation based in Huntington Beach. Founded in Malibu seven years ago, Surfriders brings together freewheeling surfers--long thought incapable of being organized--to preserve the ocean environment. Members share a love of surfing and a fear that the ocean is foul and becoming worse. They are also concerned that the coastline is in danger of being overdeveloped, thus co-opting some of their best beaches.

Surfriders, which has grown to 17,000 members, gets involved in such projects as the Blue Water Task Force, which operate in surfing areas. Task force members keep track of the ocean environment, watching for water-quality violations such as runoffs and oil and sewage spills. Recently, Surfriders helped the 150-member Doheny Longboard Surfing Assn. in Dana Point, which is considered a model eco-surfers club, to conduct water sampling. The Doheny long-boarders also worked with a natural history group to force state officials to address the pollution at Doheny.

Surfriders says, despite its activism, that it is “not eco-militant.” It tries to work with companies and government rather than point fingers. But it is not adverse to filing litigation it thinks is justified. It also sees pollution-fighting as a long-term battle that must enlist the help of the young people. Scott A. Jenkins, environmental director at Surfriders and a research oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, has put together a slide show that teaches children that the oceans and the Earth’s atmosphere are an integrated system on which life is dependent.

These projects take the free-spirited surfing image well beyond a stereotype. Now merely wearing a “Crude Is Rude, Dude” T-shirt after an oil spill is no longer enough. Surfriders and other eco-surfer groups know that what’s needed is not only to catch a great wave, but also get involved with coastline cleanup and protection.