Rewilding Surfing

Back in 1995, when Kelly Slater had hair, boardshorts were made from sails, and grommets suffered abuse, Grey Wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone. They soon controlled overabundant elk and allowed native trees to recover, which in turn stabilised riverbanks and led to the return of songbirds and other native species.

More recently, beavers have been dropped in all over the USA, and have improved freshwater storage, boosted biodiversity and helped contain wildfires. As the old saying goes; The power of the beaver is strong.

But what do these examples of rewilding have to do with surfing? Well, like nature, various essential parts of the surfing ecosystem are under threat or have been wiped out entirely. Be it through loss of habitat, a lack of breeding, greed, cultural shifts and plain dumb luck, rewilding certain parts of the geographical and cultural surfing landscape is needed. But where to start? We have a few ideas.

The Surf Check

It’s hard to say when the analogue, physical, check-the-surf-with-your-eyeballs, thing became endangered. Surfline started providing pay-per-call telephone surf reports back in 1985, was an online platform in the mid-90s, and started streaming surf cams in 1997. Surf-Forecast started in the early 2000s, and soon covered the globe. By 2010, the commute to the beach, the ten minutes checking the surf, the 15-minute chat about checking the surf, and the decision to surf, or not to surf, had been eroded by checking the cams and forecast from your bed. The rewilding process will take time, education and government legislation. A surf forecast ban, like the one in place for teens on social media in Oz, will need to be put in place. Car (or electric bike) parks and dedicated surf check towers will need to be re-established. Surfers will need to get used to inane small talk, the odd shared spliff, and driving to the next beach, and then the next one along again, before returning to the original, just in time for the onshore. Worth it though.

Kneeboarders

The erosion of the kneeboarders' role in the surfing hierarchy started decades ago. Editor Phil Jarratt named his Tracks kneeboard column "Cripple's Corner” in the 80s. The arrival of a new rapid-breeding predator, the bodyboarder, has also been critical in pushing kneelos to white rhino status. Field studies show that the youngest current kneeboarder in the wild is now 36 years of age. Problematically, no female kneelos have been found in the wild. We propose that breeding programs be put in place, operating in protected slab sanctuaries located on the South Coast of NSW and San Diego in the US. DNA samples need to be collected and placed in seed banks, but without rewilding, they will go the way of surf magazines, goatboaters and pubic hair.

Kirra

The surf world has lost waves before. Killer Dana, France's Le Barre, Harry’s in Mexico and Madeira’s Ponta Delgada are just a few. However, unlike Kirra, none of these are reversible. It was the Tweed River Sand bypass that did it in for Kirra. Where MP used to whistle through subterranean 20-second tubes, you could now land a 747 on the hard-packed sand. Coolangatta and the surfing world traded in their golden goose of Kirra for the magic bean of the Superbank. Now, in terms of rewilding, it’s a simple process. Just turn off the sand pump, and let nature (all be it an already heavily groyne-bastardised version) take its course. In a decade or so, the Superbank will be a distant memory, and Kirra will be back. And then we can start to reverse the whole process again.  

The (Professional) Surf Photographer

Jeff Divine said a career in surf photography is “starvation on the road to madness”. However, for a while, they were long-lens surf gods. Once protected by cameras that cost more than a timeshare apartment in Cabo and manual focus that took autism and ten years to master, the surf photographer’s first stage of extinction came with the arrival of digital cameras. Many were left to die, alone, in dark rooms all over the world. And that was before the iPhone, GoPro and social media turned every surfer into a photographer and publisher.  Again, the rewilding program won’t be easy. Freeing the remaining half dozen surf photographers from their wedding circuits will be tricky. The economics of getting corporations to reward all the hard work, expertise, time and investment, by actually paying for images, will need huge cash incentives. We’d need to cross-index the influencer model with Ted Grambeau’s air miles, and use Pete Joli’s ponytail as a whipping brush. But if it comes off, they can be back on the road to starvation in no time.