Still rising above plastics?  Good.  Here’s a new way to help (if you have an iPhone).  There’s a new app called The Extraordinaries where organizations and non-profits are able to get the public to contribute to various causes and campaigns.  For The Surfrider Foundation the Extraordinaries is being harnessed to aid in their Rise Above [...]

With the recent rains and the obscene amount of crud washing into Southern California’s oceans, ocean pollution has been on my mind a lot lately.  I know a lot of the problems are to do with factory farming, big business and so on, but people are to blame as well.  It got me thinking as [...]

The Curse of the Conflicting Reports:  Surf report is showing waves up to 7 feet in the coming days.  Weather report is showing rain over the next three days.  Drat! Heading into fall SoCal surfers are faced with the great compromise – surf vs. health.  Autumn is typically one our best surf seasons, but it [...]

SurfAid has set up an Emergency Response Appeal to help the people of Padang who were affected by the 7.6 earthquake of September 30th. (Surfaid is a great organization set up by surfer/physician Dr. Dave Jenkins.  The aim of Surfaid is to combat deadly, preventable diseases in areas frequented by surfers.) I’m sure you’ve seen [...]

File this on under damned if you do, damned if you don’t – sunblock contributes to coral reef bleaching. An Italian university study published in the April issue of Environmental Health Perspectives links sunscreen to coral bleaching. Worse still, sunscreens can accumulate while moving up the food chain (just like mercury). The Italians tested effects [...]

Power to the people, babies.  It’s time to harness the power of the pen (and the web). A bill to re-authorize the BEACH Act is moving through Congress (also known as The Clean Coastal Environment & Public Health Act of 2009 – H.R. 2093 & S.R. 878). This Act will do more to protect public [...]

Many of you may remember Tiny Dancer, our sea lion pup we befriended on June 19th at El Porto (north end of Manhattan Beach).  Well, TD was clearly not feeling well and was way too thin for his age.  The lifeguards told us it was likely that his mother may have also been ill and [...]

When surfing, rarely is there a day when there’s not garbage out there bobbing in the water with me – sandwich bags, chip bags, water bottles, grocery bags… I’ll pick the refuse up, curse the litterer and recycle it when I return to shore. But there is a much larger problem out there, specifically with [...]

Governor Schwarzenegger is proposing that California close a grip of our state parks. This concerns you fellow surfers because many of our favorite breaks are considered “state parks” – San Onofre, Huntington, Bolsa Chica, Leo Carillo, Doheny, San Clemente…  A “State Beach” is a State Park.  So, what happens if they close?  They could fall [...]