Catch a Clean Wave
A ragtag band of ardent surfers has matured into a powerful force for coastal protection
by Kenneth Miller
When Jim Moriarty went surfing off El Salvador last summer, the worst hazard wasn’t the trees washed out to sea by the torrential rains. He also had to navigate a plume of raw sewage, disgorged by a nearby river. “It was the brownest water I’ve ever seen,” he recalls. “I was sick for nearly a month afterward.”
For Moriarty, 43, the floating filth was just one more indication that he should keep his day job. As executive director of the Surfrider Foundation, he leads a ragtag army of 52,000 volunteers devoted to protecting the planet’s coastal zones. The San Clemente-based nonprofit has 60 chapters across the US, as well as affiliates in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Australia, Japan and Brazil. Founded in 1984 in Malibu by a quartet of Orange County surfers determined to save their favorite break from a proposed seawall, the group has expanded far beyond its original constituency. (Half its members have never ridden a board.) But it has stayed true to its mission: to keep beaches — and the waters around them — clean, intact, ecologically healthy and accessible to the public.
The challenge for Surfrider, as it enters its third decade, is to pursue that mission in an era when coasts are under siege as never before. Thanks to climate change, accelerating development, agricultural runoff and other human-generated stresses, the oceans’ edges are suffering a plethora of ills. Beaches are eroding, wetlands vanishing, coral reefs becoming bleached-out hulks. Coastal waters are increasingly fouled with virulent bacteria and toxic algae. Although state governments are beginning to address these problems (led by California, which last year enacted the nation’s first comprehensive coastal protection plan), the only hope for continued progress is sustained pressure from local activists.
Surfrider has long been the most vocal grassroots coastal advocacy group, but organization has not been its strong suit. “They’re the MTV of environmental organizations,” Sierra Club coastal policy director Mark Massara told the San Diego Union-Tribune last year. “So far, that hasn’t translated into the environmental powerhouse we were looking for.”
That’s where Moriarty comes in. A wiry man with close-cropped hair who favors baggy plaid shirts and Vans sneakers, he looks deceptively like a laid-back surfer dude. In fact, he’s a former tech-industry entrepreneur, and when he was hired to run Surfrider in May 2005, he seemed in some ways an unlikely choice for the position. The founder and CEO of two search-engine firms (Notiora and Change.com), he had no experience in the nonprofit sector. Stranger still, he was a registered Republican and a devout Christian — hardly typical résumé points for a green warrior.
A closer look at Moriarty’s biography, however, makes his qualifications clear. Born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, one of five children of a chemical engineer, he grew up summering on New England beaches, where he fell passionately in love with the sea. Although he didn’t start surfing until his late 20s, as a teenager he became one of the first sponsored skateboarders in the country. After studying computer science at Ohio State University, he moved to New York City, where he fell into the burgeoning punk-rock scene. Eventually, he arrived in Silicon Valley, just in time for the dot-com explosion.
To Moriarty, the punk revolt, the tech boom and the environmental movement shared key characteristics. “They were about questioning, about rebirth and exploration,” he says, over fish tacos at a San Clemente surfer bar. “They were also about standing up for what you believe in, no matter what people say.”
Moriarty brought those attitudes with him — along with his tech-bred mania for efficiency and systematization — when a headhunter introduced him to Surfrider’s board of directors. At his first interview, he says, “I told them, ‘I love your brand, but I’m not your guy. I’m not a policy wonk.’ I pounded them pretty hard, because I had nothing to lose.” As a longtime member, he felt the group’s goals were vague and its message unfocused. He was outraged to learn that international affiliates met with the leadership only every five years. “In the end, they flipped it back to me and said, ‘Okay, go do it.’”
Moriarty agonized briefly over the career change (and pay cut), but at his wife’s urging he accepted the challenge. His first move was to install an Internet-based phone system, so that staffers could speak with the international affiliates daily — for free. He upgraded the group’s website and brought in top PR firms to generate buzz. He remodeled the organization’s offices (a funky warren above a barbershop), covering the walls with whiteboard to encourage brainstorming. He traveled the country, meeting with chapters and walking their beaches. Most important, he retooled Surfrider’s strategic plan.
“Our vision statement is a number,” he says. “It’s 150. One hundred and fifty coastal wins by 2010.” The battles range from the local (fighting a proposed road that could destroy the legendary surf break Trestles) to the global (a campaign against pulp mills in Oregon, Chile and Tasmania), but the definition of victory is simple: a beach or stretch of water saved from degradation.
Moriarty’s broader goal is to influence the culture. “To me, the environmental movement’s identification with only the Democratic party is a tragedy,” he says. He aims to spread the gospel of coastal stewardship to every sector of society. And his ideology — or lack thereof — may help. Although his views on “life issues” (colored by his religious faith, and by his experience as father to adopted 11-year-old twins) led him to the GOP, he’s dismayed by the party’s stance on other issues, including the environment and the Iraq war. Unlike many green activists, he can communicate with people across the sociopolitical spectrum.
“I spoke to a church group recently,” he recalls, “and I told them, ‘You’re being labeled, maybe rightfully so, as ambivalent on the environment. Read the Bible! If you believe that God created the heavens and the earth, then you’ve got a mandate: take care of creation.’”
Kenneth Miller is a former senior editor at People, reincarnated as a freelance writer in Los Angeles. His work has also appeared in Esquire, Rolling Stone, Salon, LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Times Magazine.
