This week Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) is launching Global Wave Wednesday, a new campaign action uniting surfers from around the globe in the call to protect UK waves from pollution, marine litter and over-development. SAS is calling on surfers, environmentalists and ocean lovers to join them and the coalition of wave and ocean protections organisations on Wednesday, 15th May, for this global day of action to protect our waves.

Global Wave Wednesday will be the first time the global wave protection community has joined forces to highlight calls to protect natural surfing resources. A broad & diverse range of organisations are supporting Global Wave Wednesday, covering almost every coastline in the world. The supporting partners include the world’s biggest surfing NGOs, grass roots environmental organisations, leading oceanographers, and surfing federations.

Global Wave Wednesday partners will be helping secure 100,000 signatures for the Protect Our Waves petition, which calls on the UK parliament to debate the value of surfing waves and locations, and legislation in order to recognise the importance of waves as a cultural, social, economic and environmental asset to coastal communities. Peru, New Zealand and Australia already have legislation that protects surf spots and the sport of surfing, and SAS hopes to deliver the same level of recognition and protection for the UK.

Surf protection groups supporting SAS’s POW petition on Global Wave Wednesday include:

• Surfrider Foundation (USA & Hawaii)
• Surfrider Foundation Europe (France, Spain, Holland, Germany, Italy)
• Save The Waves Coalition (International)
• National Surfing Reserves (Australia)
• WiLDCOAST (Mexico)
• Salvem o Surf (Portugal)
• Surfers’ Environmental Alliance (USA)
• World Surfing Reserves (International)
• Surfbreak Protection Society (New Zealand)
• LiVBLUE (USA & Mexico)
• Ocean Revolution (USA & Mexico)
• SurfEns (Mexico)
• DGCostera (Peru)

There are an estimated 23 million surfers worldwide* and the combined supporter base of Global Wave Wednesday partners exceeds 500,000. Surfers are passionate about protecting waves from inappropriate coastal developments and pollution and to ensure they have sustainable access to their waves.

SAS Campaign Director Andy Cummins says: “It’s great to have surfers from all over globe standing up to protect UK waves as part of Global Wave Wednesday! Surfers are part of a global community, often travelling to experience new waves in new countries. We believe that UK surfers deserve to enjoy clean waves and we want to be able to promote the UK as a clean wave destination.”

Surfrider Foundation (USA) Environment Director Chad Nelsen says: “Global Wave Wednesday is a great first step in unifying the world’s surf protection organisations and the Surfrider Foundation is proud to be supporting the Protect Our Waves petition today. Surfing is a truly global sport and we travel the world in search of clean, healthy and exciting waves so we have a vested interest in supporting wave protection in the UK and around the world.”

Executive Director, DGCostera Carlo Grigolletto says: “Peru has a rich heritage and culture of surfing and we are lucky to already have laws that recognise and protect our unique and world-renowned surf spots. Peruvian surfers are stoked to be part of Global Wave Wednesday supporting calls for UK waves to be protected in a similar way, for everyone, for now and for ever.”

Surfing was first introduced to the UK in 1890 in Bridlington (North Yorkshire) by two visiting Hawaiian princes*. Since then the UK has established itself as a genuine surfing location. There are world class waves in every corner of the UK and numerous UK beaches have a rich history of hosting international competitions. Surfers in the UK spend an average of 8.5% more than the other coastal tourists*. Surfing supports coastal economies outside the traditional tourist season, as the waves are generally best in spring, autumn and winter. However, some of the UK’s best waves are under threat:

North Cornish Coast: Several of the best Cornish surfing beaches, including St Ives Bay & Perranporth are under threat from a dredging proposal. The dredging proposal could result in negative impacts on important coastal processes, reanimating pollutants and enforced restricts on using the sea for all water users. SAS are engaged in the Environmental Impact Assessment process and have raised significant concerns within the scoping report. http://www.sas.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/MMO-Scoping-Opinion-Response-SAS.pdf

Broad Bench, South Coast: One of the best waves in the UK, known as Broad Bench, is found on the outer limited of the Lulworth MoD firing range. Currently the wave can be off limits to surfers for up to 228 days a year, including the best seasons for waves at Broad Bench. SAS are working together with the local surf community and the MoD to try and find solution that can allow the MoD full access to their firing range and increase the access surfers can have at Broad Bench.

Saltburn, North East Coast: Saltburn has a thriving surfing community but yet the water quality is failing European standards that are so inadequate they are in the process of being superseded by more stringent standards. The water quality at Saltburn and other beaches around the UK failing these standards is of extra concern to surfers as we immerse and ingest more than the average bather. Health risks associated with bathing in sewage polluted waters include: ear, nose & throat infections, gastro enteritis, Hep A, Ecoli etc.

Please sign the POW petition if you haven’t already, and pass this link on. Thank you!

Nightdrive, a short film by Patrick Trefz for SAVAGE CINEMA
Mavericks during one of its biggest days ever. Is it a dream or a nightmare?
Shawn Dollar is restless the night before, then drives from Santa Cruz to Half Moon Bay where he rides one of the biggest waves of the day during the Expression Session.
More info: sansebastianfestival.com

After the huge audience success enjoyed by BIG FRIDAY last year, and the quality of its movie proposals, this year sees the birth of SAVAGE CINEMA, a new section in collaboration with RED BULL MEDIA HOUSE, set to bring the best from the world of action sports, adventure, and the great outdoors to San Sebastian.

This new proposal is the perfect set up to become the world leading platform for presenting the latest and most outstanding productions in the rapidly growing field of adventure and action sports films. SAVAGE CINEMA is opening its doors to new techniques of filming, production and innovative ways of storytelling in action sports and outdoor film making, and aims to demonstrate the obvious evolution in the quality of these films.

The Anoeta Velodrome and different cinemas throughout the city will host these exciting screenings with regular attendance of the protagonists and filmmakers. A perfect occasion for the general public to enjoy the adrenaline of these adventures, almost as if they were actually doing the heart-stopping feats themselves. Because this is what these films set out to do: take the viewer to places that are usually not accessible to him, emotionally as well as physically. Audiences will experience real heroes by nature at the top of their game.

Rock-climbing, snow and mountain sports, surf and skateboard showcase some of the disciplines featured in the films to be presented in a programme of, at least, 5 titles. With no restrictions in genre, length or other formal criteria, we will feature documentaries as well as short and experimental films alongside fictional works.

Savage Cinema joins the Festival as a non-competitive section with its own selection committee: Maialen Beloki (member of the San Sebastian Festival Management/Selection Committee), Phillip Manderla (Filmmaker and Head of Feature Films at RBMH) and Sancho Rodríguez (Coordinator of Savage Cinema).

An ambitious project that turns the spotlight on the San Sebastian Festival as a global reference in the coming together of film and action & adventure sports to present the audience and industry (producers, distributors and exhibitors) with the best titles each year.

This fast-paced short film highlights a group of young surfers from an organization called Project WOO who are working with Nicaraguans to create a whole new model of surf-tourism in Gigante, Nicaragua. Join Surfing for Change Host and Professional Surfer, Kyle Thiermann as he encounters scores of off-shore barrels, weird food, and inspiring people on his adventure through the second poorest Country in the Western Hemisphere. Kyle’s journey engages in a critical look at the current model of surf tourism in the third world and how it’s changing!

See more here
For Facebook page go here
For his Twitter page go here.

Shifting focus from obsession to awareness is the key to a sustainable future.

Words and Images by Marieka Jacobs

“It’s the papilla, you see. The blind spot. Sometimes I just need to put my surfing obsession left of centre, place it in the papilla, so that it’s ever-present, but doesn’t consume my focus.”

A dear friend explained this idea to me, during one of our routine pow-wows on a surfing holiday in Indonesia. I liked the idea of the papilla, of a place or location that is real, but is devoid of a visual presence. A special place where you can tuck thoughts and feelings away with the knowledge that they won’t be staring you in the face everyday demanding attention and invoking obsession. As my friend said “you gotta keep surfing a little bit to the side”.
His idea got me thinking – what about those things residing in the papilla that perhaps shouldn’t be? Things that are erroneously relegated to this peripheral region? Thoughts and issues that we collectively keep to the side because they take too much effort to bring forward to the front of the mind – perhaps because they affront our personal comfort.
Sustainability and the environment, and it’s relevance to the surf community, is too often one such ‘issue’ that hovers in the papilla and on the edges of our consciousness. Moreover, it seems that, for the surf community, there must be some effort involved in turning a blind eye because daily reminders of just how sick our earth is are as abundant as rain in the Indonesian wet season.
Plastic bottles and other non bio-degradable consumer items floating past us in the lineup, and constant bouts of ear and skin infection caused by pollution are disturbingly routine concerns for the travelling surfer, certainly within Indonesia but all over the world as well. Air pollution, the degradation of coral reefs and marine life, sewerage disposal issues, the burning of plastics – all of these are issues that the travelling surfer contributes to, but sadly leaves the locals to deal with.
This is the advantage of living in a developed nation, of possessing a passport and having a disposable income to indulge our ‘passions’ like surfing – we’re afforded the ability to come, have fun, then leave, without having to consider the outcome of our actions too heavily.
In many ways, surfing destinations such as Indonesia are places of ‘positive contradiction’. They are places where hordes of transient travellers implant themselves upon villages that are, for the most part, focused on the same concerns that have dominated their lives for centuries – making a living from primitive practices (relatively speaking), finding adequate shelter, feeding and caring for their families.

These essential undertakings of life are orbited by the happy energy of travelling surfers, tearing through villages with their boards attached precariously to the side of two-stroke scooters, their excited banter relaying tales of swell size and direction, the perfect A-frame, and spitting barrels. It is, of course, worthy chatter for surfer kin, for this obsessed tribe of searchers who probably planned their Indo adventure months, even years, beforehand; a tribe that negotiates time out from family, friends and work to join the search for their own ‘epic’ experience, both in and out of the water.

And this noisy chatter – this intersection between travelling surfers and the local village people is an overwhelmingly positive experience – an experience underpinned by the unspoken understanding that these ‘stoked’ foreigners support the local economy, and that the Indonesian people willingly provide endless hospitality and that ever-reliable, ever-radiant smile.
However, perhaps this widely acknowledged understanding that the surf community does indeed support the local people through the exchange of currency makes it somewhat easier to push those other, bigger issues – such as the plight of the environment – into our collective blind spot.

But the question begs to be asked: How much longer can the surfing community push such crucial issues to the side? And how much longer will we want to? As is always the case with retrospection, things may seem a little different on the other side of fence, when we realise that our past actions (or as the case may be, inactions) have brought upon us a way of living that is inferior, intolerable, and possibly finite. In a way the words on this page, and the accompanying photographs, are an appeal to surfers to start to really acknowledge those elements, people, places that are directly impacted upon by their – by our – quest for the perfect wave. Those things that are “kept to the side”, placed in the papilla, for no other reason than that they are a little too difficult or overwhelming to face right now.
In a recent interview in Surfing World magazine, Australian surfer and world-acclaimed author Tim Winton, offered an acidic, yet accurate description of the surfing community’s reluctance to take on the “big issues” of environmental protection and sustainability: “It’s as if we are hiding behind some kind of youth cult, leaving stuff like conversation to the grown-ups while we just go back outside and play. I think that response is piss-weak and too common”.

Borrowing from the common vernacular, Winton offers a damn good description of the situation with the words “piss weak”. “Piss weak” doesn’t suggest ‘overwhelming challenge’ or ‘insurmountable problem’. It doesn’t make us think that the issue at hand is akin to the Mount Everest of hiking, or the Mavericks of surfing. “Piss weak”, rather, depicts a combination of laziness, ignorance and indifference, all topped off with a rather large dose of NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) syndrome. The thing is that this type of indifference just won’t cut it for much longer, regardless of whether you’re a surfer or Joe Bloggs down the street. Time is running out, and soon we won’t be able to ‘fence out’ environmental problems beyond the parameters of our own backyards.
Moreover, many surfers treat surfing destinations such as Indonesia like their own backyard, returning year after year to visit the breaks, people and locations that they have become so fond of. However, you could argue that to build a meaningful relationship with these beloved surfing destinations is to take on a ‘duty of care’ for the people and environment. This doesn’t mean that you have to uproot your life and devote all your time and energy to improving the situation at a local level. The ‘duty of care’ referred to here is more about realising the interconnectedness of the communities and ecosystems that constitute our fragile Earth. It involves waking up to the fact that the behaviours we engage in, whether in the comfort of our home, at our local break, or at some overseas destination, impact on people and places, both near and far. As we begin to realise our personal responsibility in these global issues, and as we begin to shift topics such as environmentalism and humanitarianism from the papilla to the front of the mind, we too can start generating some of our own conversation amongst the youth cult, the grown-ups and the communities we encounter on our way.

Marieka Jacobs has worked as Partnership Manager for Australian based not-for-profit Climate Positive, as well as event managing the launch of Safe Climate Australia, which featured keynote speaker Al Gore. She is passionate about both the environment and people, and enjoys exploring both areas through the crafts of writing and photojournalism. She is soon to commence a waste management strategy in Lombok, Indonesia.

Here’s the CNN interview with Anderson Cooper

This shot is To Mane, via Billabong XXL

This one’s by Bruno Aleixo via Vert bodyboardimg mag, also this morning.

A short vid from this morning from Zon Canyon. We’ll upload better, as soon as we can get hold of some.

Another from Bruno:

[This article first appeared in The Surfer's Path in 1999. We thought, with a 928mb low about to turn the North Atlantic into a maelstrom of memorable proportions, this aint a bad time to brush up on our explosive cyclogenesis, and some of the biggest storms in North Atlantic history]

The weather forecast is showing a huge low just west of Ireland. Its about to deepen even further, and swing east over the UK. Its
 isobars are so close they’re almost touching. The centre looks like
a solid black mass. The weather manis warning of impending doom.
 Lives will be endangered, there’ll be heavy financial repercussions,
 insurance claims and a strong chance that many people’s worlds will 
fall disastrously apart.
 Meanwhile, you’re stoked. The storm is out there, and the swell is 
inevitable. It’s like you just won the lottery and all you have to 
do is wait for the money to come in. You start planning with glee -
what board, which spots, which days and times will be best….
To many surfers this is a big part of surfing. If you’ve been doing 
it for a number of years, the biggest, meanest storms that appear on 
the weather chart will end up sticking in your memory. Some of them
 may never have produced rideable surf for you, but nonetheless, 
they’re a source of fascination.
 This article is about some of the deepest lows that have existed in
the North Atlantic, and some of the most disastrous storms that have
 ravaged the UK, from where I write. These storms are well documented 
in the meteorological literature, and they have often been given
 names (like hurricanes), just to add to that air of human-like
 unpredictability.

The Fastnet Storm, August 13th 1979

A flotilla of yachts set sail from Cowes, Isle of
 Wight. They were supposed to race to Fastnet Rock, and then back to
 Plymouth. Of the 303 that set out, only 85 made it. Fifteen lives
 were lost and 136 people had to be rescued by helicopter. This
 well-known disaster, the Fastnet Storm, was caused by winds of over
80mph, whipped up by an unexpected low pressure system which
 developed over Ireland. It wasn’t actually that deep, (about 980mb),
but the fact that all those boats got caught out, makes it a real 
tragedy.
 One interesting thing about the Fastnet Storm is that with all those 
boats stuck right in the middle of a large mid-latitude depression,
 each one carrying a barometer and an anemometer, a very
 comprehensive study of what goes on inside one of these lows was
 able to be made. Also, the reports of some of the surviving crews
 were valuable to meteorologists, like descriptions from the crew of ‘The Gremalkin’, talking of waves “like blocks of flats…”

The stricken boat Gremalkin after a night of 30-60ft seas in the Fastnet Race, January, 1979

The Great Storm of 15-16 October 1987

This was 
the one where Michael Fish, the weatherman got ripped to shreds by
the media for not predicting it the day before. The Sun newspaper 
even called for the resignation of Professor J. T. Houghton,
 Director-General of the Met. Office. Personally I don’t know what
 the fuss was about. I clearly remember the weatherman saying “…it
 will be very breezy in the Channel…”
This storm didn’t produce much in the way of surf because it
 deepened to about 956mb when it was already over the land. However,
 it did cause considerable damage to the heavily populated south of 
England. With gusts of over 115mph, eighteen people lost their 
lives, and an estimated 25 million people (and 15 million trees)
were affected in one way or another.
 There is an endless list of incidents connected with this storm. For 
example, at Porthleven, three people had to be rescued when their 
own rescue helicopter ditched into the sea, and at Harwich a prison 
ship containing 50 inmates broke free from its moorings and drifted 
around for two hours. And minutes before a tree smashed down his 
house, Dr. H. Lawes of Noble Denton Weather Services reports, “…I
 telephoned the forecast office… the synoptic situation sounded
 interesting from an academic point of view, but following another
 loud crash I put the telephone down rather hurriedly”.
Again, the Burns Day Storm of 25 January, 1990 got to its deepest 
after it had settled over Northern England, but it did generate 
enormous swell earlier on, as it deepened just west of Ireland. Most 
recognised breaks north of Southern Portugal were out of control,
 although spots south of there were going off. On the land, it was a
 similar story to the Great Storm of ‘87. Millions of trees got blown
 down, 47 people lost their lives, and hundreds of millions of pounds 
worth of damage was caused.

Brear Storm 1993 was predicted to drop to 909mb but in the end it only reach 914mb. Only.

The Lowest Lows

Sometimes, all the factors to do with the jet stream, the sea
surface temperature, the polar ice, the butterfly flapping its wings
10000 miles away etc., all coincide to produce a depression which 
gets incredibly low. Usually these lows suddenly deepen, as if they
 were always ready to be triggered off. In the world of meteorology, 
if a low deepens more than 24mb in 24 hours it’s called “explosive 
cyclogenesis”.
The two lowest barometric readings recorded in this part of the 
Atlantic have occurred in the eighties and nineties. The first was
 the Atlantic Cyclone of 15 December 1986, which got down to 916mb,
and the other one was the Braer Storm of 10 January 1993. The Braer Storm has been much better documented. It took its name from the
 final destruction of the Braer, a large, loaded oil tanker which had 
become stranded on rocks off the Shetland Islands by another storm a
 week earlier. Dipping to 914mb, it has been acknowledged to be the 
deepest Atlantic mid-latitude depression ever recorded. The experts 
thought it was going to deepen even more. I can remember vividly
 listening to the Shipping Forecast from a crackling old radio whilst 
huddled in the back of a van at Mundaka: “Rapidly deepening Atlantic 
low, expected just west of Bailey, 909mb”, and the wind for Bailey
 was “… Force twelve or more…” which is also quite rare. Needless 
to say we were expecting some surf.

What Sort of Surf do These Storms Bring?

Not necessarily that good. It depends on so many other factors, like 
the fetch length, how long the storm stayed in one place, the
 direction of the fetch, etc. The Braer Storm produced some great
 surf, but not really as big as many had expected. The low didn’t
 persist long enough, despite a very tight, intense centre similar to
(but not the same as) a hurricane.
 On the other hand, the Cyclone of ‘86 probably produced some
 all-time surf throughout the whole Atlantic. I was in Morocco at the 
time, and I remember some local rolling up with a newspaper on a
 rickety old bike; “Hey meester, beeg waves for joo, no feeshing for
us”. Even he could see there was something unusual about today’s 
weather chart. It took six days for that swell to arrive, but when 
it did, it was 10ft and super-clean.
 Anyway, the general consensus is, these storms definitely produce 
big waves, and the more of them there are, the more often we’ll get
 big surf in the Atlantic.

Hmm … Morocco. Not a bad place to be in the next few days. Photo: Ricardo Borghi

So Is the North Atlantic Getting Stormier?

Well, yes, so it seems. And not only that, but the thing that 
affects us directly, namely wave heights, have been shown to
 increase significantly over the last few decades. Measurements from
 wave buoys and weather ships have shown that, in 1960, the maximum 
wave height in the Atlantic was about 12m. There has been a
 systematic increase, and now, in the late nineties, the average
 maximum height is around 18m. Long-term trends in wave heights are
 intimately linked with how stormy the ocean is, so we can safely say 
that the Atlantic has got quite a bit stormier since the early 
’60s. Whether this trend will continue is anybody’s guess. It’s 
probably just the upward side of a much longer-term oscillatory
 pattern (like El Nino, but over many decades). We haven’t got good 
enough meteorological records for that – we don’t really know.
For people like myself, who strive to try and
 predict these types of things, it’s tough, even as our forecast models get better and better. On one hand we have 
to fool ourselves, and those who pay us, that one day we might be able to
 predict everything (otherwise we’d give up altogether). On the other
 hand, we must keep in mind that forecasting is inexact. The fundamental laws of quantum mechanics forbid us from 
making perfect predictions of anything, let alone the weather.
Which 
is a really good thing, because otherwise both surfing and science
 would be forever predictable, and not worth a whistle in the wind.
Tony Butt is author of The Surfer’s Guide to Waves, Coasts and Climates, published by Alison Hodge. If you want a copy, you can get one free right now by joining Surfers Against Sewage, here.

This article first appeared in The Surfer’s Path way back in 1999.