Eco-Warriors in New Zealand
Posted on August 01, 2008 @ 6:43 AM
The Surfer’s Path’s favorite eco-warrior team heads to New Zealand to drop in on a few waves… and Parliament.
Words by: James Pribram
Photgraphy by: Will Henry
Every surfer has a dream. At first it’s just being able to catch a wave and ride it competently. Later, it may lead to other dreams – like becoming a professional surfer, or discovering a new wave, or maybe even helping other people. Surfing can lead you on a path towards various dreams, and I have been following mine since I was five.
Growing up on the coast in Laguna Beach was already like a dream. Watching my older brother John dominate the break in front of my parents’ house, I not only wanted to be like him, I wanted to be better. I wanted to be a pro – if for no other reason than that I didn’t want to work the 9-to-5 grind like the rest of the world. I wanted to spend my life in the ocean, surfing.
Once you have an aim, things can start happening. I had some success in the National Scholastic Surfing Association, became a high school state champion, and made the NSSA national team. I turned pro at 18, was sponsored by Op, surfed on the Bud Tour, then on the WQS tour off and on for nearly 14 years.
When I was 20 a knee injury kept me out of the water for six months, and while recovering I took a writing course. Soon, surfing and writing went hand and hand for me. Later on, when I lost my Op sponsorship, I started the Aloha School of Surfing in Laguna. I never gave up on being a pro surfer, yet that dream was looking more and more remote as the years rolled by. But it never kept me from finding and pursuing new dreams.
Eventually, I got involved in water quality and other beach-related issues in my hometown. I was appointed by the city council to sit on Laguna Beach water-quality and environmental committees. Then, late in 2005, my lucky stars aligned. Both The Surfer’s Path and Op were looking for a surfer who could write and was involved in the green fight. By the beginning of ’06, I was once again being paid to surf, and my main assignment was a new adventure that combined surf travel with environmental missions. I was now an “eco-warrior” and a guardian of the surf zone.
My mission was simple: find locations around the world that had great surf but also an environmental problem related to the waves and/or the water quality. A photographer would travel with me to document both the surf we encountered and the environmental work I was able to do. I would write about my trips – surf travel with a different sort of hook.
First stop, in April of 2006, was the chilly coast of Chile. Serendipitously, it was there I met my future co-pilot, Will Henry of Save the Waves. Will is not only a great cameraman, he’s the nuts and bolts of our missions into foreign lands. He is in charge of our special-ops program. He finds locations with the most pressing environmental concerns, researches them and sets up our meetings with local environmentalists and groups. He puts together each trip’s itinerary. Will’s a classic guy who walks it like he talks it. He’s the Big Guy. He likes a good cocktail, a good laugh, and we love to give each other heaps of crap. He’s a good friend and the key to our missions.
Destination: New Zealand
Going to New Zealand is probably a trip that just about every surfer dreams of. Rolling green hills covered with sheep, endless stretches of beach with good, juicy waves … it was so easy to imagine as another dream trip. I’ve been on a lot of great surf trips, but cruising around the North Island for 18 days in late March and early April with co-pilots Will Henry and film-maker Vince Deur in an RV promised to set a high bar… once we got started.
We arrived at the airport in Auckland to learn that an important meeting had just been set up in Wellington, some 15 hours of driving to the south, and our original itinerary was immediately scrapped. Should we fly or drive? We decided to stick to our plan to rent an RV, and would make the drive down as quickly as possible, then take our time heading back North. After all, we were slated to speak to a member of Parliament.
We pored over maps to maximize our surf exposure on the trip down, got the wheels, and hit the road … which led us to this nice wedging righthander that broke off of the corner of a headland near Raglan. Our first day in New Zealand found Will and I hooting and hollering as we surfed into darkness. Meanwhile, Vince was filming for our upcoming documentary entitled ECO-Warriors: Guardians of Surf … until his batteries ... oops! Seems the airlines had lost one of Vince’s bags – the one most of his camera gear was in. He had a camera, and underwear, but no camera batteries.
Send this article to a friend
Issue 69 Out Now
