Return of the Longboard

Simon Anderson and his Mighty Thruster

Surf and Destroy

Terror from Below

The Unsinkable Tom Carroll

An Explosion of Talent

Tom Curren's Mile of Style

How to Turn a Circus into a Riot

I Predict Waves in Your Future

Cult of the Surf Photographer

Video Killed the Surf Movie

Waves for Sale

Surf Boom Redux

Terminally Hip

Super-Sizing the World Tour

Somebody Should Do Something

Surfers vs Apartheid

Make Room at the Top, Obrigado!

The Last Big Wave

Eddie Aikau's State of Grace

A Beloved Rival

Long Division

Surfers made two forays into mainstream politics during the mid-'80s. First, voluntarily, on behalf of the environment, and then as a reluctant bit player in South Africa’s apartheid struggle. “Sports and politics don’t mix” continued to be the surfers’ default position. But the mixing had already taken place. Athletes had in fact proven themselves to be, at times, politically influential: from Jackie Robinson’s dignified crossing of major league baseball’s color line, to Bill Russell marching on Washington, to heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali’s notorious remark that “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger”—a propagandizing one-two punch against both American racism and the Vietnam War.

Surfing, more than most sports, however, fed and nourished an especially apolitical mindset. It was famously and proudly unorganized, and had always been justly described as an “individual” sport. Furthermore, by the second half of the twentieth century, it was a hanging offense among surfers to tell outsiders about a new surf break, or an upcoming swell, which led to a default reaction not to call attention to anything at all. “We’re selfish,” as former world champion Nat Young said. “Surfing’s always been totally self-indulgent.”

Politics in general had come to be viewed as something you escaped by going surfing. “It is only within the act of riding the wave that the surfer, for a moment or two, loses his shackles,” surf journalist Brian Gillogly wrote in his 1984 “Politics of Surfing” article for 

 magazine. “Once he sets foot back on terra firma, the whole mess begins.”

Still, while surfers lined up as an apolitical supermajority, there was nonetheless room in the margins for activism of one kind or another. With varying degrees of success, battles were fought in the early- and mid-'60s, in America and Australia, over beach access rights, surfboard licensing, helmet laws, and no-surfing zones. The long-defunct United States Surfing Association is best remembered as a competition group, but it was founded in 1961 as a political outfit to “protect and preserve the sport of surfing” and “fight against misguided legislation.” The USSA chalked up some minor victories, while also showing the hard limitations of surfing's political will. In 1964, after three years’ worth of magazine ads and “Join Now!” editorials, USSA membership leveled out at 2,000. The following year, when the group changed its focus to surfing competition, membership jumped to nearly 5,000.

In the late '60s, surfing had a small role in what was then called the “ecology movement”—this was the actual starting point for surfer activism, such as it is. “Our Mother Ocean,” 

 magazine’s new environmental column, was created in response to the 1969 oil-platform blowout that dumped three-million gallons of heavy crude into the Santa Barbara Channel. The following year, in Australia, 

 editors ignored all the pretty surf shots and put a sulphurous black-and-white image of a Sydney sand mining factory on the cover of the magazine’s debut issue. Meanwhile, as hotel expansion projects threatened to alter or destroy some of Waikiki’s best breaks, original hot curl surfer John Kelly formed Save Our Surf (SOS). Kelly, in middle-age, became something of a radical. “We’ll meet you in the streets!” was the SOS rallying cry, and Kelly cheerfully announced that his group had broken into a political opponent’s office to steal documents. Kelly’s supporters papered Waikiki with leaflets about the proposed development, and a 1971 SOS demonstration at the state capital building, 

 magazine reported, drew over 3,000 “surfers, eco-freakos, and other friends.” The worst parts of the development plans were blocked, and much of the credit went to SOS.

Over the next decade, apart from the occasional surfer-led rally or petition, the sport became less involved in environmentalism. 

 had pretty much lost interest in the subject by the mid-'70s, and 

’s “Our Mother Ocean” column wandered off to focus on tidal waves and beach safety.

Then, in 1984, Malibu’s Surfrider Beach got hit with an environmental double-whammy, and a handful of local surfers decided to organize. Malibu was a perfect surf-world 

 no break was as venerated and historic, few were as beautiful, and it was located in a unique corner of America, filled with wealthy, beach-loving, eco-friendly liberals.

The first of Malibu's two problems was fairly straightforward. After the state bulldozed a channel from the Malibu Lagoon to the sea, river sediment had filled in along the point and reduced the quality of the famous Malibu surf. The second issue was more complicated: the surrounding region had come to rely increasingly on Malibu Creek as a drain for all manner of suburban and agricultural runoff. It wasn’t a burning river, exactly, but the creek water was now often contaminated before it arrived at Malibu Lagoon, where it further stagnated before getting flushed into the Malibu lineup by a heavy rain—or after a tank-clearing blast from an upriver sewage treatment plant—at which point surfers were prone to ear infections and skin rash.

With Malibu in mind, the Surfrider Foundation was launched in the summer of 1984. Santa Monica surfer and aerospace engineer Glenn Hening was a co-founder, along with an environmental battler from Huntington named Tom Pratte, and Malibu noseriding legend Lance Carson. From the start, Surfrider aimed for political respectability. In his early-'60s surfing prime, Carson was known as the guy who could murder a six-pack of Miller High Life and still ride First Point better than anyone, but at Surfrider’s first public outing—held in a community center before a panel of California State Parks officials and more than 150 supportive surfers—he wore a suit and tie and eloquently delivered the group’s keynote speech. Pratte, up next, noted that the group was already in consultation with the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club, then Hening followed with a computer graphics demonstration on how the Malibu environment was in peril. After the meeting, Hening and Pratte thoughtfully folded and stacked the community center’s chairs. The point was made: Surfrider was going to play by the rules.

In the end, Surfrider’s Malibu work was only partly successful. In 1985, parks officials rerouted the Malibu Lagoon channel to the northwest, which fixed the surf. Improving the water quality proved to be much harder, as there were dozens of polluting sources, public and private, from the top of Malibu Creek to the bottom. This wasn’t an entirely bad thing for Surfrider. The group remained diligently on the case for the rest of the decade and through the 1990s, thus proving itself as a long-term player. Because of their efforts, the Malibu water was better monitored, even if the water quality wasn’t fully restored, and some level of accountability was brought to bear on upstream polluters. In 2010, Malibu was named as the first World Surfing Reserve, and recognized as such by the California Coastal Commision, among other public and private environmental entities—including Surfrider Foundation.

Surfrider took on other causes. The group's biggest effort was launched in 1989, when it filed a Clean Water Act suit against two Humbolt County pulp mills, both of which were Fortune 500 companies. Together, the mills pumped 40 million gallons of dioxin-laced effluent a day through outfalls ending less than a mile offshore of North Jetty, the region’s most consistent surf break. Surfrider turned the case over to new hire Mark Massara, a long-haired twenty-seven-year-old University of San Francisco law school graduate who looked like Jeff Spicoli but attacked like a pitbull in the courtroom. With help from the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as the US Attorney’s Office, Surfrider and Massara hit the adjudicative jackpot in 1991, winning the second-largest Clean Water Act settlement in history: $6 million in civil fines, $60 million in factory improvements, and a $500,000 reimbursement to Surfrider. Massara also slipped in a wicked little clause forcing both companies to use recycled paper for all suit-related reports and correspondence.

Underdog litigation doesn’t get much sweeter. The network news programs covered the story the day it broke, 

 followed with lengthy features, and the 

, in a front-page article, declared that the Humbolt pulp mill case would “undoubtedly put Surfrider Foundation on the map as an environmental organization.”

Other surfer-led environmental battles were engaged. In Australia, former pro tour champion Wayne Bartholomew helped kill a 1987 development plan that would have transformed Queensland’s Kirra Point into a “marine park,” with a 500-slip boat harbor and an international shipping terminal. 

 editor Kirk Willcox bought attention to the nearshore outfalls at Manly and Bondi, whose combined output of partially-treated sewage was more than 250 million gallons a day. In Hawaii, Waimea pioneers Peter Cole and Fred Van Dyke organized against a 1,130-acre multiuse hillside development directly behind Pipeline; the project would go through a series of defeats and resurrections for almost 20 years until the state finally bought the land in question and turned it into a park reserve.

Still, it was just a handful of surfers who were getting things done—environmental consciousness didn’t penetrate very far into the rank and file. Reporting on his fight against the Kirra marina plan, Wayne Bartholomew talked in a resigned tone about the surfer’s “luxury of unaccountability.” Mark Massara said that getting surfers together for a group cause was “like herding cats.” In 1988, four years after it launched, Surfrider barely had a thousand members.

Getting surfers involved wasn’t impossible, but the cause had to be both local and urgent: a harbor, an outfall, a beachfront development. Surfrider cofounder Tom Pratte was talking to a small group of Huntington Pier regulars in 1988 about an impending breakwater project at nearby Bolsa Chica State Beach, when he was interrupted by a young board-carrying passerby. “You mean they’re going to build a breakwater out there?” the surfer asked, worried, gesturing out beyond the end of the pier. “No,” Pratte explained, “two miles up the coast.” Relief spread across the surfer’s face. “Okay then,” he said, turning away and continuing to the water’s edge. “I thought you meant they were going to build it right here.”

The surf industry wasn’t doing much, either. Surfrider’s total corporate donations in 1990 were barely $100,000—this from an industry whose aggregate sales were somewhere between $1.5 and $2 billion. Surfwear giant Op was outed for having donated a paltry $2,000 to the group. As Surfrider’s executive director told 

, his people had “busted our asses to prevent destruction and pollution,” while surf companies mostly just gave “lip service to the environment.”

Surfer-driven environmentalism continued to be a hit-or-miss proposition. Corporate funding improved, but not by much. Membership in surf-based environmental groups went up only because surfing had yet another population boom, and because organizations wised up and began recruiting from outside sources. In 2004, on its 20th anniversary, Surfrider had 40,000 members, including divers, fisherman, kayakers, and swimmers. Reflecting the larger green movement, surf magazines began using environmentally-friendly ink and bleach-free recycled paper, and there were small but earnest efforts to create “green” boards, wetsuits, and surfwear. On the other hand, surfers have always loved gas-hogging vans and SUVs (plenty of room for carrying boards), as well as jet travel, and tow-surfing would allow big-wave surfers to embrace the jetski—a loud, dirty piece of equipment.

 put this question to its readership: “Are surfers only environmentalists when it’s convenient?” Seventy-seven-percent answered "Yes" and 23 percent said "No." Among that minority, though, are some smart, hard-working activists, and because of their efforts the sport is a shade or two greener than it probably has a right to be.

Surfing fed and nourished an apolitical mindset. The sport was famously and proudly unorganized. “Surfing's always been totally self-indulgent," as former world champion Nat Young put it. "We're selfish."

Chapter: 7

Long Division

Somebody Should Do Something

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