The Surfrider team, volunteers, and supporters knew from the onset that this year was not going to be easy. We expected efforts by the federal administration to weaken coastal and ocean protections, but what we experienced was unprecedented. From cutting regulations that limit pollution and development in our waterways, to rescinding funding for critical coastal and marine monitoring programs, to the most aggressive ocean sell-off to offshore oil drilling in more than half a century, the onslaught of challenges delivered by our federal government kept us busy.
Watch our 2025 year in review video
Then there were ‘drop everything’ unforeseen circumstances, like the LA fires, that for a while sucked the energy out of our grassroots efforts to be effective stewards of that coast. Meanwhile, the visible challenges persisted — plastic pollution, the water quality crisis on the US-Mexico border, and our rapidly eroding shorelines.
We could have tried to look past the obstacles that stood in the way of our mission in 2025, but that’s not what we do. Instead, we faced them head-on and played into our strengths even harder to protect what we love.
Surfrider has the unique ability to scale and adapt to be effective, from the halls of Congress all the way to your local beach. When there is little opportunity to be proactive on federal policies that protect our coasts and ocean in Washington, D.C., we continue to mobilize in Sacramento, Tallahassee, Eugene, Albany, and other state capitals across the country. While we have watched the momentum for a swift transition to renewable energy decline, our network of volunteers has activated to restore our coastlines, in the wetlands, dunes, and mangroves, as a nature-based solution to the changing climate.
In 2025, the Surfrider network doubled down on opportunities to make progress on the ground, in the local councils, and in the state capitols, while still defending the bedrock federal protections in place for our coasts and ocean. Several state plastic pollution prevention bills were passed after years of effort. We won more than 20 local campaigns across the country with the leadership of Surfrider’s chapters. Volunteers turned out in the tens of thousands to give nature a boost by restoring coastal ecosystems.
Despite the challenges and the absence of federal leadership for healthy coastlines, this was still a year of incredible impact for Surfrider and our coasts.
Here are some of Surfrider’s major achievements of 2025:
Turning off the tap on plastic pollution is the only effective way to make an impact on this issue, and market solutions play a major role. This year, Surfrider’s Ocean Friendly Businesses network grew to 646 Ocean Friendly Restaurants in 30 states and territories, serving an estimated 42 million single-use plastic-free meals every year. New businesses were added as Ocean Friendly Hotels, now 40 in total, collectively eliminating about 1.8 million plastic water bottles and 2.7 million mini plastic toiletry bottles from polluting our communities, waterways, and landfills.
While the federal administration’s priorities blocked any efforts to pass meaningful plastic pollution reduction legislation in DC, Surfrider still successfully achieved 14 coastal victories in states and cities around the country. Together, these victories resulted in more than 862 million single-use plastic items taken out of circulation.
One example was Washington’s Recycling Reform Act, which reduces the amount of plastic pollution found on the state’s beaches and improves access to recycling. Another was in Oregon, where Surfrider successfully waged the Beyond the Bag Ban campaign, a statewide effort to eliminate thicker plastic check-out bags from grocery stores. Oregon is the second state in the US, after California, to pass a stronger bag ban.
Additionally, Surfrider defeated a dangerous Florida state bill that would have expanded the state's preemption on the local regulation of single-use plastic and reusable materials, containers, bottles, and bags. In the California cities of Santa Cruz and Capitola, Surfrider helped pass ‘Ban the Butt’ ordinances that end the sale of filtered tobacco products, the number one item found at Surfrider’s beach cleanups. In New Jersey, four local campaigns were won to require the containment and removal of plastic particles and dust at construction sites.
A lot of wins for eliminating needless plastic waste and the impacts it has on our coasts and ocean.
There were significant threats at the federal level in 2025 to upend bedrock ocean protection laws, climate programs, and funding for coastal management. Even so, Surfrider demonstrated in real time how coastal communities and ecosystems can not only survive, but thrive with nature-based solutions. By working with nature and leaning into community voices and expertise, Surfrider worked swiftly to make real progress on local and state coastal resilience policy and project opportunities.
In 2025, Surfrider’s Climate Action Program came to life as a frontline defense against coastal erosion and the impacts of climate change. By restoring blue carbon mangrove forests, coastal dunes, and riparian habitats, Surfrider is adding decades of resilience to coastlines across the country while enhancing habitat and coastal access. A total of 76 restoration events were carried out across more than 22 acres of coastline in Hawaii, California, Florida, Puerto Rico, North Carolina, New York, New Hampshire, Maine, and Wisconsin, with the support of more than 2,000 volunteers. Collectively, these volunteers installed over 40,000 native plants and removed more than 85,000 pounds of invasives.
Meanwhile, the finishing touches were put on the Surfers’ Point Managed Retreat Project in Ventura, California. This project has become the gold standard in the application of nature-based solutions to address coastal erosion and climate change preparedness. By leveraging the success of Surfers’ Point and years of community organizing, Surfrider secured a state grant of $1 million to design and apply a similar approach to the rapidly eroding and beloved ‘Surf Beach’ at San Onofre State Beach in Southern California.
Surfrider won eleven local and state campaigns in 2025 to better equip our coasts for a changing climate. In Oregon, Surfrider advanced its multi-year Oregon Beaches Forever campaign aimed at safeguarding the state’s public beaches as they try to adapt to climate change. Four state and local wins were achieved in Oregon that advance nature-based solutions, promote climate-forward planning, and protect beaches against destructive riprap.
In Florida, Surfrider helped pass a state bill to provide long-term protections for state parks, including coastal areas, against harmful development projects. On the legal front, Surfrider’s amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) support led to a significant victory for California coasts in a case that properly limits armoring on California coastlines, consistent with the California Coastal Act.
To help scale proven coastal resilience, climate action, and nature-based tools, policies, and projects, Surfrider's 2025 State of the Beach Report highlighted case studies from around the country that can be replicated and applied along coastlines facing similar management challenges.
While protections for water quality at our beaches and waterways were also targeted by the federal administration’s efforts to reduce environmental regulations, in 2025, Surfrider worked tirelessly to safeguard the programs that keep us and our families safe when we visit the coast. Eleven clean water campaigns were won at the local, state, and federal levels. This includes having successfully advocated for congressional support for the EPA’s Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health Act, or BEACH Act, which provides national grants to coastal states to run their beach water quality monitoring and public notification programs. The program is critical to provide families with the information they need to stay safe at the beach and to safeguard our valuable coastal economies.
At the state level, Surfrider helped pass a Washington bill that requires public notification of sewage spills. Other state bills that passed in 2025 include: solutions for new wastewater system technology in Hawaii; a ban on the use of Neonicotinoids, a class of synthetic, neurotoxic insecticides in Connecticut; and protections for recreational water quality against seafood processing wastewater discharge in Oregon.
Meanwhile, to address the ongoing public health and environmental crisis at the US-Mexico border, Surfrider and its coalition partners successfully advocated for more federal investment in border sewage infrastructure operations, maintenance, and capital improvements.
The role of Surfrider’s clean water programs has become more important than ever to help fill the gaps where governments are lacking the capacity or political will to address pollution issues. The Blue Water Task Force, the nation’s largest volunteer-driven beach water quality monitoring program, is now testing water quality at 613 sampling sites on beaches and waterways around the country. In 2025, volunteers ran more than 10,000 water quality tests. A total of 107,000 tests have been completed over the program’s 30-year history.
To identify and fix the sources of pollution identified through the Blue Water Task Force, multiple Surfrider chapters are working collaboratively in their local communities. This includes projects in San Mateo, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura Counties, California; Eastern Long Island, New York; Melbourne and Miami, Florida; Newport, Oregon; Kaua’i and O’ahu, Hawaii; and Rincón and Isabela, Puerto Rico.
Surfrider’s Ocean Friendly Gardens program is helping people across the country reimagine and transform landscapes, yards, and community green spaces with nature-based solutions that protect clean water, build biodiversity, and support climate resilience. In 2025, Surfrider led 97 Ocean Friendly Garden workdays during which volunteers planted 2,905 native plants and trees. Across the country, there are now more than 26 acres of Ocean Friendly Gardens that filter 23.1 million gallons of runoff annually.
Finally, Surfrider secured two significant legal wins in the courts for clean water in 2025. Hawai’i’s Supreme Court held in Surfrider and our partners’ favor in Kaua’i to help end the use of dangerous pesticides in Hawaii. Meanwhile, in another federal case, the courts concluded that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must make better decisions when setting water pollution standards for industrial facilities.
In 2025, among the many unique challenges to beach access in the US, there were coastal erosion, Space X launches, the privatization of coastal parking, and climate change. Surfrider won six coastal victories to help address threats to coastal access in California, Texas, Florida, and Hawaii while monitoring dozens more.
In California, through the Love Your Beach tour, Surfrider mobilized the public to advocate against threats to weaken or abolish the state’s Coastal Act, a landmark law that protects the state’s 1,100-mile coastline. With stops from San Diego to Sacramento, the tour collected more than 1,500 signatures from 100 different California districts, all in support of the crucial coastal environmental and access protection law.
Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, Surfrider successfully supported the repeal of Florida legislation that preempted local jurisdictions from protecting the public’s customary use rights to recreate on Florida beaches.
On January 6, 2025, President Biden announced the withdrawal of the entire US East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California, and part of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska from future oil and gas leasing. The historic action protected more than 625 million acres of U.S. waters from oil and gas development. The Surfrider network celebrated this incredible victory.
However, following the change in administrations, the White House reversed President Biden's ban and initiated an onslaught of policies, proposals, and plans to sell off our ocean resources. Surfrider quickly filed litigation with our coalition partners to restore these protections. These cases remain ongoing and may extend for years, reinforcing the importance of Surfrider’s grassroots advocacy.
While persistently on the defensive, Surfrider helped achieve two major proactive ocean protection victories in 2025. The 582,570 square-mile Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Sanctuary in Hawaiʻi was established, becoming one of the largest marine protected areas in the world. The sanctuary safeguards coral reefs, seamounts, and shoals that are home to diverse marine wildlife, including invertebrates, fish, birds, and marine mammals, including many endemic species.
Surfrider helped strengthen the protection of Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, home to the only barrier coral reef in the continental US, in addition to seagrass beds, mangrove forests, and diverse marine wildlife. The sanctuary’s Restoration Blueprint expands the sanctuary by 739 square miles to more than 4,530 square miles of protected marine ecosystems.
While these wins were significant, our ocean faced a dangerous new threat in 2025 — a brewing offshore drilling plan to open vast stretches of the U.S. coastline to new offshore oil and gas leases. The nearly 1.3 billion acres of ocean at risk in the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s proposed five-year drilling plan, released in late November, include all federal waters off California, all of the western and portions of the eastern Gulf, and most of Alaskan waters, including the untouched High Arctic, where drilling has never been attempted because of the environmental hazards.
In anticipation of such a plan, Surfrider was ready and quickly mobilized a nationwide effort to demonstrate widespread public opposition to more offshore drilling on our coasts. Surfrider’s Drilling is Killing campaign is live, and will deliver tens of thousands of public comments to the agency through the deadline on January 23, 2026. Surfrider is engaging communities, businesses, and elected leaders in this critical comment period to build the public record of opposition to the plan.
As part of a coalition effort in California, Surfrider has organized people’s hearings in response to the absence of a public process in shaping the plan. Events in San Diego, Orange County, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Humboldt, and beyond are each turning out hundreds of ocean voices to advocate for ocean protection, and say no to new offshore drilling.
In every way, 2025 was a challenging year for protecting our coasts and ocean. New threats emerged while the persistent challenges to coastal conservation remained. Undeterred, the Surfrider network championed key coastal and ocean programs threatened with elimination or defunded by the federal administration while also taking local action on the ground.
Thanks to the dedicated volunteers, staff, and supporters from coast to coast, diverse and powerful voices were shared with our federal leadership on the importance of conserving our coastal resources. Meanwhile, every day, those same ocean defenders were safeguarding your beach through local solutions, in the field, and in the water.
We don’t expect 2026 to be any easier, but we do know that we are walking away from this year stronger than ever to confront the challenges that lie ahead.
If you have not supported Surfrider’s work yet in 2025, please do so now and become a friend of the ocean.