As we approach the end of 2023, it is an appropriate time to reflect on the past 12 months of Surfrider’s work to protect our ocean, waves, and beaches. While the pressures on our beloved coasts continue, Surfrider made great advances to ensure that our favorite places to surf, swim, and play are healthy and accessible today and for generations to come. In fact, our network of tens of thousands of volunteers, policy experts, and conservationists had incredible success. In 2023 we passed dozens of policies at local, state, and federal levels to protect our coasts. We removed hundreds of thousands of pounds of trash from our beaches and helped hundreds of businesses transition from single-use plastics. We kept people safe from polluted ocean water and restored acres upon acres of coastal ecosystems.
It is widely acknowledged that the weather extremes and ocean phenomena we faced this year were fueled by climate change — from unprecedented marine heatwaves, like when the water in the Florida Keys this summer topped 100 degrees, to the massive winter storms that ravaged the California coastline. New studies reinforced that the lifecycle of plastics is not only bad for our ocean and its wildlife, but also for our bodies and climate. By 2040, GHG emissions from plastic production, use and disposal could account for 19% of the total global carbon budget.
Despite these pressures, we remain hopeful because our powerful activist network is working every day to redirect the planet towards a more sustainable future; by protecting our communities and coastlines from the impacts of climate change through nature-based solutions, by stopping plastic pollution at the source, and by amplifying our collective voices to be heard at the highest levels of government. In pursuit of our goals to eliminate plastic pollution, ensure safe water on our beaches, help our coasts adapt to a changing climate, protect marine and coastal habitats, and maintain open access to our beaches, we’d like to share with you some of our successes in 2023.
Plastic Pollution
This year Surfrider helped to pass 13 plastic pollution policies in nine cities and four states across the country. This includes a Skip the Stuff bill in New York City that reduces the use of single-use plastics in food delivery and takeout orders. In Washington, we helped pass a comprehensive single-use plastic ban that requires water refill stations, bans foam-filled docks, and reduces single-use plastic body products in hotels. Our team in Oregon helped to modernize Oregon’s health code to cut down on single-use plastics and more easily allow for reusable containers and refill systems in the state.
In 2023, Surfrider welcomed 210 new Ocean Friendly Restaurants (OFR), reaching a total of 540 OFRs in 28 states and Puerto Rico. The program now serves more than 99,000 single-use, plastic-free meals a day. Surfrider also added seven hotels to the program in California, Oregon, and Washington. In 2024, we will be launching a new Ocean Friendly Hotels Program to reduce single-use plastic waste in the hospitality industry.
Meanwhile, Surfrider volunteers continued to clean up trash and plastics from our beaches and waterways, as they have for nearly 40 years. This year, more than 32,500 volunteers removed 197,000 pounds of trash through almost 1,000 cleanups on our nation’s beaches. More than 163,000 cigarette butts, 17,500 straws, and 30,000 plastic bottle caps were collected. The data from these cleanups inform Surfrider’s highly successful plastic pollution policy campaigns, making a lasting impact at the source, like we did in New York City, Washington, and Oregon this year — with our ultimate goal being to eliminate single-use plastics nationwide.
We also strengthened our global reach, working with our Surfrider affiliates across the world, particularly in Europe and Senegal, on the Global Plastics Treaty, an effort that will continue in 2024 to tackle the entire life-cycle of plastic at an international scale.
Clean Water
To help communities become better equipped to identify and resolve local pollution problems, Surfrider made an impact from the national to local levels. This year, Surfrider helped to achieve historic funding for the Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health Act, or BEACH Act, an EPA program that provides critical funding for coastal states, territories, and tribes to monitor their beaches and to notify the public in the event of pollution levels that could put public health at risk.
Meanwhile, Surfrider’s Blue Water Task Force (BWTF) is rapidly becoming the world’s most comprehensive beach water quality testing program, with more than 561 sampling sites across the country. For more than a quarter century, BWTF volunteers have been testing water quality at beaches and in coastal waterways and using their data to raise awareness of local pollution problems and advance policy solutions. In 2023, there were 57 chapter and student club-led BWTF labs that ran nearly 9,000 water quality tests in 14 states and territories.
Coasts and Climate
In 2023, Surfrider helped pass 12 local and state-level coast and climate-related policies that improve coastal resilience along 8,915 miles of coastline in California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. This includes added funding for coastal resilience projects in Washington, penalties for unauthorized shoreline structures that encroach on public lands in Hawaii, and better sea level rise planning by cities in California. Surfrider helped guide states, counties, cities, and tribes across the country to access the unprecedented federal funding made possible through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for coastal resilience projects. Our team created a resource that is helping to guide more than $5 billion into critical adaptation efforts to protect ecosystems, wildlife, and communities.
Across the Surfrider network, more than 1,200 volunteers restored coastal habitats including mangroves, a blue carbon ecosystem, and coastal dunes —critical natural barriers to storm surge, waves, and sea level rise. In California, Florida, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Wisconsin, Delaware, Hawaii, Ohio, and Puerto Rico more than 12,000 native plants were installed across approximately 650 acres of coastline. These restoration efforts are improving the resilience of climate-vulnerable coastlines across the country, through a nature-based solution.
Ocean Protection
In the U.S.’s commitment to protecting 30% of the world’s ocean by 2030, Surfrider advanced its ambitious efforts to establish new marine protected areas and conserve our coastal waters. In Puerto Rico, Surfrider continued to steward Tres Palmas Marine Reserve, the first community-driven marine protected area on the island, through water quality monitoring, coastal restoration events, and educational outreach. Meanwhile, Surfrider continued to make progress to establish new marine reserves in Aguadilla and Vega Baja y Manati, on Puerto Rico’s north coast. These reserves will protect coral reefs, habitats for an abundance of marine and coastal wildlife, and critical outdoor open spaces for local communities and visitors.
On the west coast, in California and Oregon, Surfrider worked with ocean users and state agencies to conserve more than half a million acres of coastal marine ecosystems located within the states’ marine protected areas.
Surfrider’s network also worked to strengthen the conservation of more than 7.1 million acres of marine habitats located within Olympic Coast and Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuaries, and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument. Our chapters and staff in Washington, the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and Florida helped to inform important updates to management plans that will protect more habitat, encourage the restoration of carbon-storing ecosystems, and limit take of marine resources in vulnerable areas.
In California, Surfrider worked with the Northern Chumash Tribal Council to establish the 5.4 million-acre Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary. The designation will be the first tribally nominated national marine sanctuary in the U.S., preserving marine and cultural resources along 156 miles of central California coastline.
We also continued our fight to stop new oil and gas drilling off our coasts. We helped introduce eight bills in Congress to ban new drilling and our grassroots network and partners secured the smallest five-year offshore drilling plan in U.S. history. While Surfrider strongly opposes any new offshore drilling, the three approved leases in the final plan are vastly better than the 47 leases originally proposed by the Department of the Interior in 2019.
Beach Access
Fully committed to Surfrider’s goal to keep our beaches accessible for all to enjoy, our network worked tirelessly to address threats posed by private property owners, developers, and sea level rise. In Texas, Surfrider’s chapters successfully addressed state-level legislative efforts to undo coastal access rights enshrined in the Texas Open Beaches Act since 1959. A series of bad bills that Surfrider Texas rallied to defeat would have severely limited the public’s right to access large sections of Texas beaches.
Surfrider and coalition partners filed a lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration to address environmental harms and threats to access associated with the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy launch program at Boca Chica Beach in south Texas. SpaceX has applied to close State Highway 4 for up to 800 hours annually. The highway is the only public roadway connecting Brownsville and surrounding communities to Boca Chica Beach, the nearby state park land, and a National Wildlife Refuge.
In 2023, Surfrider also worked to restore permanent public access to Oregon’s iconic Lighthouse Beach in Coos Bay and led successful local access campaigns in Key Largo and along Chicago’s lake shoreline.
Thanks to your support, in 2023 Surfrider was able to work harder than ever to protect our ocean, waves, and beaches for all people. We remain dedicated to eliminating all plastic pollution from entering our ocean, ensuring clean water for people to surf, swim, and play in, making sure coastlines are adapting to the impacts of climate change, and ensuring open access to our beaches. We would not be able to tackle such challenges without our volunteers, chapter, staff, and members. Everyone has a role and we are grateful for the one you have played in this busy year.