Somewhere, out there. Photo: Unsplash
The more I learn about surfing, the harder I try not to share secret spots. Giving out information for free is a solid way to invite more people into the water, obviously. But sometimes the definition of what constitutes a secret spot, and the rules that come with it, are blurred.
For example: the other day, while filming an edit of a friend purely for my own enjoyment on an analog camcorder, I ended up pointing my lens at waves in front of a hand-painted sign that read, “NO pictures NO tags.” I happily respected the sign and vowed not to include the clips from that place in the video. But it’s kind of a bummer… I wondered if there was a way I could crop the footage to avoid landmarks and just show the waves.
Just a few days later, I found that same spot on Surfline of all places. Surfline! There was no cam yet, but it got me wondering how secret it could really be if it came up right next to world-famous spots. You can see it from nearby breaks that do have cams. And there was no barrier to enter the water like there is in some places – like a gnarly rock-climb into the ocean or poison ivy or any plethora of other unnamed hazards. And my friend took me there, so wasn’t that technically spot sharing, too?
It’s like a logical premise, where knowledge makes you guilty. If you happen upon a spot with no idea there’s a perfect wave there, it’s not a problem. But if you seek out a spot you know people don’t want publicized, then it’s an issue. Tourists anywhere take family photos right in front of A-frames and post it without even realizing. And no one blames them for it.
If you tell one person about a spot you found, is that “sharing?” If you post a photo with no geo-tags, is that sharing? How do you know if you can record certain spots at all? Who gets to find and claim these spots?
I respect the hard work that comes with earning the right to show up somewhere and contribute to a crowd. There should be some regulation of places that take effort to seek out. Adventure in and of itself is worth preserving. A New York Times article on the death of secret spots quotes Chris Burkard, adventure photographer, as saying “To me the mystery and anonymity of the surf experience is critical. When I grew up seeing these remote beaches on the cover of SURFER, and all you were given was the name of a country, that was so cool. What started me wanting to do this as a career was literally that lack of information.”
And it’s not selfish to want to keep places secret. Visitors anywhere bring more trash, noise, and basically the opposite of everything that makes venturing into nature appealing. Surfing can be as simple as man versus nature, man harnessing cosmic vibrations and riding literal waves of energy. But that flow becomes more difficult to tap into with 50 other people out.
But this isn’t about localism, per se. The theme of respect is shared between the two, but secret spots aren’t necessarily localized. And plenty of mainstream spots are extremely localized. Localism looks different at remote spots and popular ones, but you could draw a Venn-diagram with secret spots on one side and localized spots on the other.
And this phenomenon of wanting to keep wild places private isn’t unique to surfing. If you rock climb, you probably don’t want to set your crash mat down next to 30 other people. So, I don’t raise these questions from a surfer’s perspective as much as from a photographer’s. If I was a surfer, it seems simplest that one wouldn’t want any media of any spot at all. No dilemma. Or so you’d think.
Because then there’s the case of Maverick’s. It’s more dangerous to surf alone than with other people, though the former may be more romanticized. But Maverick’s is now one of the most publicized breaks, and one surfer, Jeff Clark, surfed it by himself for 25 years.
According to a news article from the East Bay Times, “No one but Clark would attempt to surf Maverick’s until 1990,” when he convinced Tom Powers and David Schmidt to paddle out that winter with him. What motivated him to share the spot? He wanted to surf with a few other guys.
But when Mavs made the June 1992 cover of SURFER mag, its visibility may have spun out of control. Half Moon Bay, Calif. now gets “10,000 visitors a year coming to see Maverick’s. There was maybe a third of that number coming to visit the area five years ago,” says Dan Temko, Half Moon Bay’s harbor master. And over 40,000 people attended the competition last year.
Maverick’s was dangerous alone, and in that situation, with the addition of fellow surfers, it becomes more enjoyable. Maybe we forget that in its own way, sharing is human nature. We want to celebrate our achievements, to have something to show for our journeys. And at some point, the people who discovered a spot become too old to surf it. Sometimes it’s okay for knowledge to be shared, a little bit.
But as Devon Howard once put it, the way that it’s shared is important: being respectful of the people who found a place before you is a must if you’re going to go there at all. “There are people who feel like they’ve tended a garden for years,” he said, “and then you come in with a dirt bike and do some doughnuts and peel out in it, kicking up dirt in their face.”
So, maybe it’s okay to take photos, just not post them? Or take them but make sure there are no identifiable landmarks. Or maybe there are still other, better ways to remember the best waves: ones that are non-visual. When surf writer Allan Weisbecker touches on secrets in his book In Search of Captain Zero, he writes that, “It is time spent within the confines of the sea’s emerald recess — the term green room was coined elsewhere and long ago. It says it all — that represents surfing’s real nirvana state: its place of secrets.” A picture is worth a thousand words, but secret spots, the ones still left, are priceless.
