June 5, 2009 Friday, Evening

Wipeout Bar and Grill	World Ocean Day Celebration
6:00 pm to 9:00 pm	Surfrider Foundation Marin County

If you didn’t attend Surfrider Foundation Marin County’s celebration of World Ocean Day Friday June 5th, then you REALLY missed it.

Forty surfers, ocean enthusiasts, environmentalists, concerned citizens and lovers of Marin’s beaches crammed into the backroom of the Wipeout Bar and Grill in Greenbrae and braved the noise of a busy restaurant to hear about the meaning of World Ocean Day, surfing, the Plastic Vortex, water quality in Marin, the movement against desalination, Surfrider’s Rise Above Plastic program and surfing in the old days.

Guest speaker, Steve Hawk (pictured above), read his humorous article “Getting Drilled” about having his ear drilled out due to surfer’s ear, a condition where the ear canal closes down due to continual contact with cold water. A friend asked if he considered giving up surfing to preserve his hearing. “No way, get out of my house.” A true surfer would never give up surfing regardless of the price. Steve has made surfing his profession through writing. He was the editor of Surfer magazine from 1990 to 1999, executive director of the Swell.com website, author of the book Waves and numerous articles about surfing. He spoke of the changing landscape of publishing and it’s impact on surfing magazines. One company now owns both Surfer and Surfing magazines, thus they do not compete and both have a large presence on the Internet. The recession is taking its toll and advertising is down. Surfer has gone from 180 pages to 140. A different business model, which is working, is Surfer’s Journal that relies on hefty issue price ($12) instead of advertising.

George Orbelian, avid surfer, head of the San Francisco Global Trade Council, board member of the Farallones Marine Sanctuary, and executive team member of Project Kaisei, spoke about the “Gyre” (also known as the Plastic Vortex). The Gyre is an Ocean vortex northeast of Hawaii that due to ocean currents has been accumulating millions of tons of plastic waste in a mass the size of Texas that is killing marine life, growing bigger every day and impacting people’s health. Every piece of plastic ever made still exists because its molecular structure resists biodegradation. Over time plastics disintegrate into ever-smaller pieces due to weather and UV impact. The smaller particles resemble food and are becoming part of the zooplankton mass consumed by small fish at the bottom of the food chain. Smaller fish are eaten by bigger fish, and bigger fish are eaten by humans. Thus plastic, a carcinogen is becoming pervasive through out the entire food chain. George is an executive team member of Project Kaisei, a United Nations Environment Program. Beginning in the summer of 2009, Project Kaisei will examine the Gyre by making two swaths through the Plastic Vortex to study how to capture plastic waste and detoxify and recycle it into diesel fuel. Its mission is to understand the logistics needed for a successful clean-up operation. We will want to follow the progress of this important effort.

Mill Valley lawyer Kerry Stoebner spoke about the efforts of the newly formed Marin County Water Coalition, a group of civic groups of which Surfrider Marin is a member, to oppose Marin Municipal Water District’s proposed desalination plant. The negatives of desalination are numerous: uses nine times more energy than treatment of land water, requires continual operation regardless of needs, will flush untreated brine waste containing concentrations of harmful chemicals such as cyanide, ammonia, PCB’s and fire retardants back into the bay, will dump a toxic sludge into the overtaxed Redwood Landfill, is highly destructive of marine life by killing fish, fish larvae and marine mico-organisms in its in-take machinery, and extracts water from San Francisco Bay, a known “toxic hot spot.” The solution is aggressive water conservation. Through the sponsorship of Food and Water Watch, James Fryer, a water management and conservation expert and former head of conservation for MMWD, just published his eight month study, Sustaining Our Water Future – A Review of the Marin Municipal Water District’s Alternatives to Improve Water Supply Reliability. His report concludes that increased conservation, reduction in landscape irrigation, improvements in reservoir operations, reduction is system leaks, increased usage of efficient toilet and urinal retrofits and additional water recycling will supply more than the district’s projected water deficits. Kerry and other Coalition members had copies of James’ report for everybody to review.

Kathy Soave, head of the Science Department at the Branson School, marine biologist and avid surfer introduced Kevin McGovern and Will Harvey, Branson Students, who presented their World Ocean Day video. The video, which the was shown on the restaurant’s numerous video screens, discussed the origin and meaning of World Ocean Day and interviewed high school students about the importance of the world’s oceans. It was well done and well received by this ocean-loving crowd.

In the corner of the room sat a six-foot long, four-foot high a model of a tubular wave made of plastic bottles, the result of an eco-project by teacher Ann Brown and her students at the Neil Cummins school in Tiburon. With the help of Surfrider’s Michelle Slade, the students participated in Surfrider’s Rise Above Plastic Program that instructs about the destructive consequences of plastic to our environment. Ann, two of the wave builders and their parents were there to receive congrats from audience. Their wave will be in the Larkspur Fourth of July parade. Look for it.

I gave a brief talk on Surfrider Marin’s water testing program. Once a week two retirees who surf gather water samples at Bolinas and Stinson, drive them to Branson School where students under the guidance of environmental science teacher Jamie Brandt (who is also an avid surfer) test the quality of the water. Surfrider Marin provides the equipment and chemicals, the students carefully add the testing agent, incubate the solutions for 18 hours, measure the amount of bacteria and post the results on Surfrider’s Blue Water Task Force website. The process tests for enterococcus, bacteria found in human sewage. We in Marin are fortunate; our tests show that the ocean water quality is excellent.

The surprise of the evening was Fairfax resident John D’Amato showing up with freshly restored copies of his 1964 surf film, The Young Knights – A Hymn to Surfers. Wipeout’s manager Frank queued up John’s movie and we were treated to classic longboarding in Southern California (Hermosa, Manhattan Beach, County Line and Huntington Beach). As the film’s promo put it: Longboards only, short hair and no tattoos. Check out the film at John’s website – www.youngknightssurf.com.

Everybody had a great time, spirits were high and the enthusiasm to carry on the efforts to protect our precious oceans filled the room. Next time be there. Don’t miss it.

Check out my photos at:

http://gallery.me.com/lorenlmoore1#100068