Surfing groups from Europe, Latin America and the United States are expected to gather in Rosarito Beach on Monday (May 6th-8th) for a three-day conference aimed at conserving the world’s top surf spots.

Global Wave Conference III focuses on surf protection efforts across the globe, including Mexico, Peru, Portugal, France and Great Britain. The event will include discussions of the problems faced by various regions, but also presentations of environmental success stories.

“All the different groups have different strengths,” said Chad Nelsen, environmental director for the San Clemente-based Surfrider Foundation, which is organizing the event together with the Imperial Beach-based group, WiLDCOAST.

As surfing has gained popularity, “we’ve been trying to coordinate those groups to develop a really global network of surf protection.”

The keynote speaker will be Efrain Niebla, Baja California’s secretary of environmental protection.

read more at UTSanDiego

Never mind the guns – when surf’s up in the war zone, it’s time to grab your board.

With tensions high between North and South Korea, the demilitarised zone between the two countries is one of the most volatile places on Earth.

“Surfers are always drawn to the exotic and challenging and most will travel huge distances to surf a wave in a strange place, war zone or not.”

But the threat of war doesn’t stop a tight surfing community from catching waves, even as soldiers stalk the beach and helicopters roar overhead.

The 38th parallel is the latitude along which North and South Korea were divided after the Korean War in 1953. Where the ancestors of Kiwi photographer Shannon Aston once fought, he now surfs – and documents.

Mr Aston used to surf the breaks off New Zealand’s peaceful east coast, near his home town of Christchurch, before moving to Korea to begin lecturing at a private university in Seoul.

read more @ stuff.co.nz

Last week, the Obama Administration released the FY2014 budget, and once again it eliminates the EPA’s Beach Grant Program that funds recreational water quality monitoring programs to protect swimmer safety.

Public outcry over these same cuts last year motivated supporters in Congress to ensure continued funding for this program throughout 2013 but the President’s current proposal threatens future funding of this popular program.

EPA’s Beach Grant Program funds beach water testing efforts and ensures that health standards are applied consistently in coastal states across the country. The proposal to eliminate this program will seriously endanger the health and safety of the over 100 million beachgoers and swimmers across the nation and the vitality of US coastal, tourism-based economies that are worth more than $80 billion annually.

“If you take away funding for water quality testing, you put families and children at risk,” says actor and Surfrider Foundation supporter David Chokachi. “Everyone has a right to know if the water at the beach is safe to swim in.”

Last year, David along with representatives from the Surfrider Foundation and other environmental organizations traveled to Washington D.C. to speak at a Senate briefing about the importance of continued federal funding for the BEACH Act.

“By defunding the BEACH Act program, state and local governments will now be solely responsible for water quality testing,” Chokachi continues. “Unfortunately, the reality is that some states rely entirely on the EPA grants to support their beach programs, so these states may stop their beach water quality monitoring altogether. Many other states will likely test less often, use less safe standards, or could drop monitoring completely during the offseason, when surfers tend to dominate ocean use.”

read more at transworld