Surfer-Environmentalist Tom Pratte Dies : Obituary: The Huntington Beach activist, who helped found the Surfrider Foundation and became its first executive director, had been battling cancer. He was 44.

Tom Pratte, who helped found the San Clemente-based Surfrider Foundation and became its first executive director, died April 6 after battling cancer, a family member said Thursday. He was 44.

Pratte’s condition had been diagnosed as cancer last August, his mother, Betty Jean Pratte said. He died at home, she said.

Pratte followed the active life of surfer and environmentalist. He was Surfrider’s director from 1985 to 1990.

“His life was dedicated to coastal environmentalism,” said Dr. Gordon LaBedz, a Seal Beach resident and former member of Surfrider’s board of directors.

Pratte joined a handful of surfers who established the Surfrider organization in 1984 as a vehicle to protect popular surfing areas from pollution.

The informal group incorporated Surfrider and set out to prevent dredging of a creek spilling into Malibu Surfrider Beach that would have ruined the famed beach.

Jake Grubb, Surfrider’s executive director, said Pratte, who traveled in a beat-up van, was a well-known figure up and down the coast.

“Protection of the waves and beaches was his obsession,” Grubb said. “He rode them, studied them, wrote about them, and fought fiercely for their survival two decades before most surfers even began to worry and wonder what was happening to our waves and coasts.”

Malibu and Manhattan Beach were two of Pratte’s favorite surfing beaches, said Pratte’s mother.

“He just loved the ocean,” she said.

Pratte graduated from Marina High School in Huntington Beach and Humboldt State University in 1982 with a bachelor’s of science degree in natural resource planning in coastal environmental studies.

Pratte helped negotiate a settlement with Chevron Oil Co. in El Segundo that helped set a legal precedent, LaBedz said.

“The (state) Coastal Commission ordered Chevron to figure out how to give a popular beach break that they took away by building a jetty,” LaBedz said. “It formally established a surf break as a coastal resource, and Tom worked on an artificial reef idea to help rebuild the lost surf zone.”

A private memorial service will be held at the home of his parents Sunday.

In addition, the South Bay Surfing Assn. will sponsor a “paddle out” at 8:30 a.m. Sunday from Redondo Beach and lay a wreath on the ocean in remembrance.

Pratte is survived by his parents, Eugene and Betty Jean Pratte of Huntington Beach; sisters, Kathy Andruss of Huntington Beach, Janis Heller of Lake Forest, Cheryl Pratte of Provo, Utah, and Susan Iveans, of Seattle, and a brother, Jim Pratte of Huntington Beach.