Is Bad Surf Etiquette Becoming an Epidemic?
Every week, Nate Florence and Koa Rothman sit down for a podcast together and tackle a new subject.
In this episode, it's surf etiquette. Or should we say, lack thereof.
"On a recent trip to Mex, honestly, some of the biggest kooks I've ever seen happened to be surfing with us," Florence says, starting at the 3:00 mark. "I don't know where they learned their surf etiquette, but...for a basic example, if you're riding down the wave, you have limited options — you can only really go in one direction at a point break. So if you're paddling back out, you don't have the right of way. You get out of the guys way riding the wave. You can go in, you can go out, you can go lateral and put yourself in the whitewater...but I saw people doing it in front of you, in front of me, throwing boards and scratching to get into the face of the wave, in the only line you [the surfer] has to take."
"It's crazy," says Rothman, "Surf etiquette has changed, even since we were kids."
Sound harsh? It shouldn't. With so many new surfers entering the ocean, there really does need to be more awareness around how a lineup works. Florence and Rothman are absolutely correct: When you're paddling out, you do not have priority, and it's your job to get out of the way, even if that means putting yourself in harms way. If you're a new-ish surfer, read that again.
They go on to talk about how priority works, and how too many surfers these days have adopted the if I'm deepest, it's my wave mentality, when in reality, that's just not the way a lineup works. It's so much more intricate than that.
So where do we go from here? Better education, for starters. That starts with the surf instructors, and then it's on every surfer to take a long hard look in the mirror and think about where he/she fits in.
Only been surfing for a few years? Yeah, maybe save that surf trip to Indo or Hawaii for another decade, at least.
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