Working for a cleaner coast, San Luis Obispo chapter of Surfrider nonprofit turns 25
The ocean is so huge that it seems limitless — hence the phrase “Just a drop in the ocean.”
However, humankind has found a way to test the ability of the sea to absorb insults.
Oil spills, garbage, sewer flows, nuclear waste and cigarette butts have all been sent to sea.
A quarter-century ago, four local surfers looked to turn the tide with the launch of a San Luis Obispo chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.
The chapter celebrated its 25th anniversary in October.
Mary Schiller wrote this story, excerpted here for length for the Telegram-Tribune May 18, 1995,.
Surfrider Foundation: Crusading for a pristine coast
PISMO BEACH — The blazing blue sky, though polished to perfection by a westerly breeze, could not complete with the sea.
The people walking on the beach this particular sunny morning did not come just to look at a brilliant sky. They came to follow the curve of the shore, feel the sand sink around their feet, inhale the ocean’s oxygen and listen to the waves breathe in, and out.
It was the ideal day to talk with Paul Schiro about the ocean’s health, something with which he is very familiar. With co-founders Michael Rudge, Mark Campbell and Bob Olgin, Schiro opened last fall the San Luis Bay chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, an international non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and enhancing the world’s waves, beaches and coastal wetlands.
“Today the beach is beautiful,” said Schiro as he looked out at the water from a balcony balanced above the sand.
“It’s clean, it looks good. If we were here in January, I’d be saying something different, because we were surfing in Coca-Cola type water.”
A surfer since he was a young boy, Schiro, 42, has a definite affinity for the sea, as do all members of the foundation. But Schiro is quick to point out that the group is not just a bunch of surfer dudes. Its members range “from barrister to beachcomber, from diver to diva,” Schiro said. “We even have one young man, 12 years old, who joined by himself.”
But surfers do play an important role in the group’s mission of conservation, research, education and local activism.
“I consider surfers as the test species,” Schiro said. “They’re the ones that are right out there in the surf zone. They’re not just walking the beach. They’re tasting the water, it’s getting in their ears, and its getting in their system.
“Just in the last few storms that we’ve had there were a number of sinus problems and other things surfers contracted,” he said, “due to E. coli bacteria in the runoff from some of our inland waterways.”
So how are the beaches on the Central Coast faring when it comes to E. coli and other bacteria?
“Not as (bad) as I thought,” said Schiro.
“Pismo Creek and San Luis Creek are testing high, Morro Bay not as high. I hope it’s just seasonal,” he said. “But we’re in a lot better shape than most other beaches.”
According to Schiro, more than 2,000 beaches in the United States were closed last year, 500 in the Southern California area alone, because of hazardous contamination. Several of Schiro’s friends who live down south have told him that after rainstorms, “they don’t surf for four or five days at a time, just because of all the urban runoff.
“We’re very lucky here in that we have a narrow corridor with mountains and not to many concrete rivers going to the ocean,” he said. “If there’s anything, we have warm mammal fecal matter because of the agrarian aspect here, and the petrol.”
It was, in fact, the petrol that prompted Schiro and his friends to open the local chapter, which now has 170 regional members and 30 active members.
“The Unocal oil spill in Guadalupe, the Unocal oil spill in Avila, Chevron up in Estero Bay. ... Those three got us going,” Schiro said. And like the four original members in Santa Monica who launched the foundation back in 1984, he said, “We felt there was a yearning in us to give something back.”
The group offers education programs for children from kindergarten through high school. The key elements are teaching them beach safety, respect for the ocean, as well as giving them information about habitat and ecosystem formantion.
The “Teach and Test” program gives high schoolers a chance “to go out and test the water themselves, using the scientific method,” Schiro said.
The foundation also sponsors beach cleanups once a month.
With a grimace, Schiro explained what ends up in those large trash bags the combers carry as they stroll the sand.
“You can’t believe what we collect on these beach cleanups,” he said. “A lot of fishing debris … The most items picked up are cigarette butts, by far. By weight, 14 percent (of the trash) is cigarette butts.”
But Schiro believes that if people become more aware of the condition of their beaches, “they’ll become more responsible. It may just take a little bit of time.”
“I think that people become numb to certain things,” said Schiro, “just because … they’ve become used to them. So they settle for mediocrity.
“But the ocean is nothing to be tampered with,” he said. “It’s the lifeblood of our planet.”
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 2:29 PM.
