Boards of Education : Marine Institute Surf Science Class Hits Lab Before Waves

At the Orange County Marine Institute, there’s more to surfing than simply grabbing a board, a bar of wax and hitting the waves.

Students in the institute’s first surf science class don’t just learn how to hang 10. They are tutored on surfing etiquette, California coastal currents and how to test the ocean’s water for pollution.

Officials at the Orange County institute, which each year hosts about 90,000 students for courses on oceanography and marine ecology, have designed the weeklong camp to teach aspiring surfers that riding the waves is not just a skill, but a sport demanding respect for the ocean.

“We want to bury the old ideas people have about surfing,” said Harry Helling, the institute’s associate director. “Surfers these days are looking for political clout and are involved in keeping environmental issues alive. We want the younger generation to continue this image.”

The camp, which will feature sessions through the rest of the summer, begins at 7 a.m. each morning. On Tuesday, about 16 sleepy-eyed teen-agers from cities throughout Southern California and as far away as Oakland gathered around two tables in the institute’s laboratory near the Dana Point Harbor.

Some say they enrolled in the camp simply to learn to surf, so they were none too pleased to learn that hourlong laboratory sessions early in the morning were part of the curriculum. A few rubbed their eyes and propped their chins on the table as instructors Karen Drewe and Adam Ramirez used a long, rectangular glass tank to show how waves are generated.

Nick Reynolds, 12, of Laguna Beach pretended that he was the wind, paddling the water at one end of the tank. Foamy ripples knocked against the other end, where 15-year-old Sean Tamillo of Rancho Cucamonga gradually lifted an adjustable glass slope, causing the ripples to rise in the tank.

“That’s why Hawaii has humongous waves,” instructor Ramirez interjected. “When the slope is gentle, like California’s, we have smaller waves. But Hawaii is like this volcano in the ocean, so when the waves slap against the steeper ocean slopes, you get giant waves, 10- to 15-foot ones.”

A few students perked up. Maybe, they reasoned, this wasn’t so boring after all.

They were teen-agers like Jennifer Cummings, 14, of Dana Point. Cummings signed up on Monday “because my dad told me to.” But she returned Tuesday because “it’s fun to be in the water and to learn the cool stuff about the environment and like how to dip dive (duck under a high wave)”

The youngsters also learned how coastal development can kill the surf. Ramirez, an environmental science graduate from UC Santa Barbara, gestured to hundreds of yachts moored at Dana Point Harbor and explained how construction of the harbor in 1966 meant the end of “Killer Dana,” the legendary 10-foot waves that prompted the Beach Boys to immortalize the Orange County surfing spot in their ubiquitous ballad “Surfing USA.”

An important element of the camp is surfing etiquette. Students are taught who has the right of way on a wave and are cautioned to avoid fierce fistfights that are common at some surfing spots.

“The waves do not belong to anybody,” Drewe said. “But in the surfing world, surfers in a better position have more of a right to a good wave. Just remember not to cut anyone off and to always share the ocean.”

Later, the teen-agers grabbed their boards and wet suits and headed for Boneyard, a popular surfing spot at Doheny Beach State Park. This is the same spot where local long-boarders conduct water tests almost daily and have found unsafe levels of fecal coliform and pollutants brought down the creek from nearby communities. The students planned to take their own samples today.

Once they hit the sands, the teen-agers slipped into their wet suits and paddled in a phalanx out to the break. The waves were mere ankle-slappers, but a few of the youngsters wiped out on the first swell.

“Some of them hope to be performing stunts at the end of this week,” Drewe said, smiling. “We just want them to get the message that the ocean is theirs to take care of.”