What goes around...

Used by ancient cultures for millenia to symbolise the sun, the ages of woman and the turning of the seasons, the spiral is the most meaningful symbol for surfers.

The spinning of a low pressure system that generates swell, the turbulent eddies that increase the size of the waves within the swell and the beautiful spirals of seashells on the seashore are the good spirals.

But what goes around comes around. Cheap oil has led to cheap plastic which ends up in the ocean and can survive for hundreds of years The spiralling currents concentrate it into certain areas. The most famous is the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch‘ covering thousands of square miles. These are the bad spirals that poison the ocean and eventually leave plastic litter on the beaches (33 years later in some cases).

What can we do? Take Surfrider Foundation‘s Pledge to rise above plastics, take part in SAS’s 2012 Barefoot Wine Beach Rescue Project and, next time the good spirals deliver you some surf, take some bad spiral plastic home for recycling.

Droughts + Floods = climate change?

An inch of rain fell in my home town today, the sea whipped into a ferment by 60mph winds. There are multiple flood warnings yet we are still in a serious drought. The newspapers are scratching their heads.

Is this a typical UK spring or a sign of things to come? Actually, its both. Variable weather is 'normal' but climate change will bring more of the same. It will be more 'normal' to have extremes of weather. More big downpours + more droughts. Higher temperatures + bigger storms.

Do you know your water footprint?

Water footprints are a similar concept to carbon footprints. We use a massive amount of water at home (the UK average is about 150 litres / person / day) but water use is also 'embedded' in the food we eat, clothes we wear and stuff we buy.

While water is a totally renewable resource, the way we use it (and abuse it) matters to surfers. Water and sewage treatment uses huge amounts of energy which contributes to climate change and many surfbreaks are polluted by sewage and industrial discharges and run-off from farming land and roads.

Pioneering US surf and outdoor apparel company Patagonia have been campaigning against dams and are taking action to reduce their water footprint through its 'Our Common Water' campaign. They are also supporting the idea of 'water offsetting' which involves buying certificates that are used to restore damaged rivers. This is a new approach for water although the idea of buying carbon credits has been around for some time and is very controversial among environmentalists as it often doesn't go hand in hand with reducing carbon use and is a soft option compared with regulating water usage and discharges.

In Europe, improvements to water are being driven by the Water Framework Directive. There are local plans which set out measures needed to improve water 'bodies' (including inshore waters).

Here are 5 relatively easy ways to measure and reduce your water footprint:
1) estimate your water footprint
2) take some easy actions to reduce water use at home, including eating less meat
3) buy products from companies that consciously use less water and use proper treatment
4) encourage local government and businesses to reduce their water footprints, and
5) join Surfers Against Sewage or the Surfrider Foundation.

Drought - gentlemen, the answer is in your hands

With half of the UK in drought, what can we do to help? Well, it appears as if the UK water industry treats (to drinking water standard) and supplies 17 billion litres of water every day and has to treat a massive 16 billion litres of 'wastewater' (sewage to you and me). This is simply a huge waste of money and carbon as very little of the water has to be drunk or used for washing food that will be eaten raw.

What are the easy ways for us to do our bit to combat the drought when performing toilet duties:
1. As flushing bogs uses at least 3 litres of water, cut out the processing and tinkle in your wetsuit (but rinse it in a water butt afterwards),
2. Pee in the shower or washbasin (probably not while cleaning your teeth)
3. When taking a leak in the bog, 'if its yellow, let it mellow'.

The above advice is equally applicable to women, although may be harder to perform.

It's true - the water was colder years ago

Us 'mature' surfers often grumble that we had it tougher in the old days - no instant online eyeball surfchecks, slow journeys to the surf and wetsuits like suits of armour. Even worse, the water was colder. Now there is evidence that all is true - even that last bit.

A pukka study shows that the oceans have been warming for over a century - before manmade climate change had time to kick in. The study was comparing new data ftom 'robot' buoys with that from the 1st serious scientific oceanographic journey by HMS Challenger in the 1870s.

Mind you, we are only talking about a rise of about 0.6° C, so it just goes to prove that our memories are playing tricks with us.

Global weirding - or just warming - and you

The other night, I watched the BBC's Global Weirding series. The term 'global weirding' looks like an attempt to sex-up 'global warming' and possibly make it less politically controversial. But it seems a pretty semantic difference, given that climate scientists have been saying for decades that the weather will get more extreme and less predictable, as well as warmer. My experience bears this out - while Spring is springing earlier every year and we're in an amazing record-breaking heat wave at the moment, we also had a very harsh winter in 2010/11.

The programme was more useful for nailing the myth that global warming is the sole result of solar flares and that us humans have had no impact.

What are the impacts of global weirding for us surfers? I've used the UK's latest projections to work out that by the end of this century, the sea level will probably have risen since 1990 by around 70cm - 88cm (depending on whether global carbon emissions stay on their current path or not). In 2030 this could be between 19cm and 24cm and it will mean that the best breaks around here will stop working or work for shorter periods of time.

The 'global weirding' effects of climate change also include higher waves and higher winds. More hurricanes may give us more long range swell. The Environment Agency's advice for flood risk agencies indicates that the annual maximum wave height change could be between -1.5m and +1m, in other words uncertain (although revised projections may become available).

So we may end up having to rely on the bigger, more extreme (or 'weird') swells to get any rideable waves.