Seriously. How good must that A frame wave be for you to paddle out in water reeking of the Men’s bathroom at Mali’s international airport? To risk nausea, nuclear diarrhoea and perhaps growing extra limbs form pollutants?
So, back to Surf Science this week. And we tackle a pretty important issue – pollution in our waters.
Okay, so growing extra limbs from contaminated waters may be unlikely (a pity, as surfers could do with extra fins and flippers and stuff), but getting sick from dirty water is commonplace. A surf competition was recently cancelled in the UK. This due to the water being, well, more raw sewage than actual water. So Infrastructure issues happen everywhere folks, even in first world countries. That shouldn’t be a huge surprise, although we’re more surprised they actually have waves in the UK’s summer.
Water pollution can be roughly divided into two categories, namely natural and man made.
Natural contamination.
Surely, you may ask, natural contamination is a contradiction, if it even exists? Well folks, if you haven’t spent at least some time in or near the coast, you’d be well aware of certain natural phenomena occurring regularly. The infamous red tide, a type of algae bloom that manifests as huge areas of rank, dull brown water (red tide sounds far more menacing than dull brown tide). This ghastly natural phenomenon makes all shellfish in the area inedible for human consumption. Side note; it’s a pity this doesn’t occur more often in areas perlemoen poachers gleefully decimate. Rendering their ill gotten product either totally useless for selling or giving its delusional end user the digestive equivalent of Victoria Falls.
Red tide is unpleasant, and sorta dangerous if you’re braaing a mussel pot from bivalves collected in affected areas. At best, you’ll end up holed up in a bathroom for a few days. At worst, holed up in a hospital bed. So ja, red tide is a perfect example of natural contaminants – but it doesn’t stop there. Think about large sea creatures washing ashore.
Beached whales? Only an utter nincompoop would consider surfing anywhere near a decomposing whale carcass. Not only do they smell worse than your foreign neighbour’s exotic cooking, they attract sharks. Fact. End of. The reasons for our large friend’s death are sad but irrelevant next to the fact their decomposing body might aid in our own deaths.
Human pollution.
Naw, we don’t necessarily mean that in the existential, humans are parasites on the world kinda concept (although read into that any way you wish.) We literally mean humans polluting the sea through laziness, incompetence, greed, negligence and that old chestnut, simply not caring at all.
South Africa has recently faced a dearth of beach closures due to sewage contamination. And we don’t mean the odd homeless person doing their ablutions in the dunes while reading the local free newspaper, then using it to wipe. No, we mean a collapse of basic infrastructure. This often results in the most revolting mess gushing to sea. No folks, the oceans don’t continually clean themselves like cats do. There’s only so much current to help out. Eventually it’ll all pile up and get dumped into one place. Where we surf.
As bad as sewage is, oil spills, other industrial accidents as well as just garden variety garbage washing to sea is worse. Parts of KZN’s rivers and river mouths have been looking like landfills after any recent bit of rain. Rubbish finds its way into rivers, or worse – is thrown in by ignorant, lazy or apathetic people, only for it to clog up and eventually assault the seas when it’s washed away en masse during floods. Dunno about you lot, but Trident deems it not fun to surf in waves surrounded by floating Nik Nak packets and medical waste.
As for oil spills and more gnarly kinds of accidental pollution – you may not initially end up as sick as you would surfing in a collection of other people’s excretions, but trust us – chemical pollution will kill off the environment quicker than you can say “Fracking”.
Surfing in literal crap? Not appealing. At least, not to us non-coprophiliacs.
