Photo: Mark Harpur//Unsplash
Protecting surf spots may be a silver bullet in the fight against climate change. That’s the conclusion Oregon State University Assistant Professor of Forest Ecosystems & Society Jacob Bukoski came to after coming across a 2021 California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) study that explored secondary benefits of conservation efforts around surf areas.
The 2021 study, Conservation Opportunities Arise from the Co-Occurrence of Surfing and Key Biodiversity Areas argued that because surf areas happen to be located in “critical, but unprotected, ecosystems,” the sport incentivizes policymakers and activists to protect them. It’s a fairly logical conclusion, of course, but Bukoski wanted to look beyond the benefits to recreation and tourism.
“Dr. Bukoski reached out to me and said, ‘I’m interested in replicating your original study, but adding information about important stores of carbon around the world,’” said CSUCI Associate Professor of Environmental Science & Resource Management, Dan Reineman. “So I joined the team and we examined this additional co-benefit of, not only protecting surf breaks and ecosystems, but also keeping carbon out of the atmosphere.”
That’s right, Bukoski believes protecting surf spots keeps carbon out of the atmosphere. The researchers cross-referenced a database of irrecoverable carbon deposits with locations from The World Stormrider Surf Guide — that accounts for 4,830 surf breaks in 113 countries. Because large amounts of carbon can be stored in the soil, sediment, and biomass in these areas, Bukoski arrived at the conclusion that they are storing as much as 88.3 million metric tons of irrecoverable carbon.
In the United States alone, expanding protections to Key Biodiversity Areas without any formal measures of protection now would keep 13.7 million metric tons out of the atmosphere. It’s the largest number/opportunity of any of those 113 countries in the study. Australia (10.2 percent), Indonesia (10.2 percent), Brazil (4.6 percent), and Panama (4.3 percent) came in behind the United States.
“Our results suggest a significant opportunity for surf conservation to strengthen protection of climate-critical carbon stocks,” Bukoski says. “At the end of the day, we should be shredding waves, not ecosystem carbon.”
