Now you know what Chad Nelsen spent $6 million dollars on last year.
You are floating at the point and you see a guy snorkeling in the impact zone. The water is 57 degrees.
The air is also cold because it’s 8 a.m. You watch this guy waving his arms over his head in chest deep water, the way you would expect from a tourist.
Even though you recognize this as common tourist behavior, you’re curious why it’s happening now. On January 26th. And not in the summer. “That’s when they all come here from wherever they come from every year,” you say. The way his arms move in circles towards the sky is familiar to you. It’s how they gain attention from their family on the beach after they’ve found a shell, or a rock, or anything they can’t find in Arizona. Or Idaho.
But you see no family on the beach. You see no one, no one on the beach. Because the sun hasn’t risen above the shadow of the cliffs yet and the morning sand is still frigid on bare feet.
You’re watching waves break on this guy’s head as you sit 20 yards further out. Chad Nelsen, CEO of the Surfrider Foundation is to your left. You are talking with him about the Evo you’re surfing as you wait for the next set of stomach-high right-handers. At this point, you’ve ridden six waves, you begin wondering about breakfast, and the curious fellow who is snorkeling in zero visibility conditions.
15 minutes later as you stand atop the stairs on the edge of the cliff, still wet, you recognize the mistake you’ve made.
This fellow in the impact zone has not been snorkeling while you and Chad were surfing, he has been trying to keep his balance. He is a surveyor who is coordinating not with a family member, but with another surveyor who is now standing next to you at the top of the stairs. You have seen people dressed like him before on the road by your house. They wear orange reflective vests and look through odd box contraptions that resemble cameras from the 1890’s, painted green.
You ask the orange jacketed man next to you why his co-worker is in the ocean, trying to stand up.
“We’re researching the way sediment moves around on the ocean floor from season to season” he tells you.
You continue talking as you look towards the Pacific, and there you see the guy, waving his arms still, communicating with the orange jacketed man next to you in whatever arm language they have agreed upon, continuing his work in a liquid environment that might be brand new to him.
During all of this, Chad directs knowing glances in your direction like this happens all the time; this business of placing surveyors in an ocean they may have never experienced before. And over breakfast that morning Chad displays an uncommon talent for being entertaining over scrambled eggs, and that’s part of the reason you ask Chad to join you on this new episode of The Wire Podcast.
Chad joins us in this new episode of The Wire, which you can find links to at the bottom of this article.
If you listen to this episode it will probably make you pretty damn happy. And proud.
See, while we all go surfing, Chad is dropping the hammer on fools who try to tread on our surfing experience. In truth, the hammer only comes out when it has to, and the parties he pushes away from the coast who would otherwise cause us problems aren’t fools, at least in my view. They’re usually well-intentioned folks who just haven’t yet experienced the ocean and come to love it like we do.
For example, Surfrider led the charge to save Trestles, which they did very successfully, but their opposition wasn’t purely an evil empire – it was partially just people who wanted jobs and short commutes to their place of business. And this is where Chad’s superpower becomes apparent. He’s forceful but not militant. He’s educated but not elitist. He is someone who can state plainly what is happening in our ocean environment, while making sense of it in a way that makes you feel excitedly informed, not guilty for buying coffee in a paper cup.
We discuss much in this episode like:
– What Surfrider spends $6 million on each year.
– How smaller charities and non-profits (and startups too) can become fund-raising superpowers in the surf space like Surfrider has become.
– The angry Instagram post I almost uploaded but didn’t.
– Lessons learned from the most successful year in Surfrider’s history – saving Trestles, banning plastic bags in California, stopping offshore drilling in the Atlantic, and a lot more.
My favorite part of this episode is the 24:50 mark, when Chad discusses our three options for dealing with rising sea levels and managing the sort of erosion those surveyors were researching that day. Most interestingly Chad has thoughts on the way that rising sea levels could even lead to better surf spots. But only if we manage the coast properly. Which is important. Because, if we don’t we could create a permanent high tide situation, and there won’t be any waves breaking at all anymore.
No surfing either.
There will only be snorkeling.
Join us on iTunes here, and Stitcher here. You can also search “Firewire Surfboards” on your favorite podcast app.
