Study: Sea level rise could diminish $200M surfing economy along Santa Cruz coast

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KGO) — It’s no secret that sun and surf draw millions of people to California’s beach towns. But now researchers in Santa Cruz are translating that wave into dollars and cents using the power of what some call, surfonomics. Professional surfer Shaun Burns is with the Save the Waves Coalition. They’ve just released a new study documenting the economic benefits that surfing brings to Santa Cruz. A figure they estimate at nearly $200 million a year.

“People come here, they spend their money at restaurants, coffee shops. There’s the boardwalk, there’s many places that utilize the ocean and how beautiful the coastline is here. And one of the biggest draws to people visiting here and staying here, even though with sales and rent going up a lot, is surfing in the ocean,” says Burns.

But like other communities up and down the California coast, the famed Santa Cruz shoreline and its dozens of surf breaks are facing threats from climate change. The report estimates that a single foot of sea level rise could diminish surfable waves by nearly 40% as the ocean tides push inland towards increasingly vulnerable cliffs. Diego Sancho helped model the costly scenarios.

“And then those breaks that were low tide only right now will eventually not break at all or only under very, very low tides. In addition to that, you have the whole cliff situation,” says Sancho.

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Translated into surfonomics, the team projects losses into the tens of millions of dollars for the Santa Cruz economy.

And Santa Cruz isn’t alone in searching for solutions. An hour or so north in Pacifica, another group of surfers are pushing a plan to help restore the battered beach area around the city’s pier and make the area surfable again. Longtime activist Rob Caughlan teamed with fellow surfers Tom Kendall and Bob Battalio, who’s a civil engineer. Together with others, they’ve presented a plan to build an artificial reef. They say the offshore structure, created with rocks and backed by sand, would help protect the city’s sea wall and potentially create a wave break that would attract surfers, and potentially their dollars.

“What would happen is we would create a mound of rocks, kind of like a big breakwater, but it would be low enough that the waves would break along them, hopefully. So we create a surfing spot,” says Batallio.

Kendall says the plan is already getting early attention from the city of Pacifica.

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“It is a big lift, but I really think it’s our only serious option for the, the near term, you know, I feel with sea rise eventually we probably will have to do some managed retreat. But I think this buys a lot of time,” Kendall believes

For Coughlan it’s all about reaching the right audience.

“There’s a limited hundred miles of coastline in California. A lot of that coastline doesn’t have good surf, but if we can make some new surf, better surf, surfers are interested in that,” he says with a smile.

Back In Santa Cruz, Save the Waves and its partners are hoping to show planners up and down California the cost benefits of protecting and restoring surfing environments. CEO Nik Strong-Cvetich believes their study can also provide a template for other coastal communities to attach a more accurate value to their own shorelines.

“So if I were to wave my magic wand, we would have a process in which surfing communities across the state from the bottom up could say, hey, we want to be able to protect our surf breaks,” says Strong-Cvetich.