Surfing climate change: top 57 breaks face rising sea threats

The waves rated most at risk include well-known spots in the US, the UK and beyond:

• Santa Cruz, California: reef breaks such as Wind and Sea and Sewer Peak.
• Croyde, North Devon: often called the UK’s best beach break, known for its powerful, hollow waves.
• Noosa, Australia: a chain of long, peeling point breaks.
• Oriente Salvaje, El Salvador: another point-break coastline.

All of them sit inside World Surfing Reserves, a program run by the Save the Waves Coalition to recognize and protect outstanding waves. The study covered breaks in all but two of the 13 reserves, spread across eight countries. The researchers say thousands of other waves around the world face similar threats.

A great wave depends on a precise mix of seafloor shape, swell direction and tide. Change one ingredient and the wave can close out, weaken or disappear.

One of the study’s authors, Dan Reineman, who teaches at California State University Channel Islands, called surf breaks “incredibly unique oceanographic phenomena” whose processes are very sensitive to change.

Climate change attacks that balance in two ways. Higher sea levels shift how much water sits over a reef or sandbar, so a spot that worked at a given tide may no longer work. Changing rainfall alters how much sand and sediment rivers wash to the coast, which reshapes the sandbars that many beach breaks depend on.

The paper, published in the journal Climatic Change, concludes that both climate change and the way coasts are managed pose serious threats to the future of globally important waves, and to the communities, cultures and economies built around them.

The most practical finding is about what people build on the shore. Where coastlines were still fairly natural, beaches could adapt to rising water by moving inland and redistributing sand, and the waves could move with them.

Where the shore was hardened with sea walls, jetties and groynes (walls built out into the sea to trap sand), beaches and waves were far less able to cope. A sea wall pins the shoreline in place, so as the water rises, the beach in front of it has nowhere to go.

That puts surfers on the same side as anyone arguing for softer coastal defenses, such as restoring dunes or letting beaches shift naturally, rather than pouring more concrete.

For surf towns, the money is real. Adam Hall, a co-founder of the North Devon reserve who helped with the study, says surfers keep the area busy in the cold months. When good swells arrive in January, February and March, they fill pubs, restaurants and car parks while other seaside resorts sit empty.

California shows the scale. The state has an estimated 3.3 million surfers, and two of the 13 World Surfing Reserves, at Santa Cruz and Malibu. A state bill, AB1938, would let local governments apply to have stretches of coast named state surfing reserves under the California Coastal Act. It had failed twice before in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, and supporters are pushing it again. Under the plan, the state’s Ocean Protection Council would set the rules, and any reserves created would count toward California’s goal of conserving 30% of its land and coastal waters by 2030. Australia and New Zealand already have national measures to protect surf zones.

For Canadian and UK readers, the lesson is the same: decisions about sea walls and harbor works made today will decide which local waves still exist in a few decades.

The study leaned heavily on the people who know these waves best. Almost 200 local experts, mostly longtime surfers, helped assess the 57 breaks, describing how their waves had already changed.

Trent Hodges, a senior programs manager at Save the Waves and a co-author, said a changing wave is a “canary in the coal mine” for the beach itself. That makes surfers useful early-warning observers for scientists and planners.

There is a climate upside to protecting surf spots, too. An earlier 2024 study of more than 4,800 surf spots in 113 countries found the forests, mangroves and marshes within a kilometer of the waves hold about 88 million metric tonnes of carbon that would be very hard to recover if released. Less than a third of surf ecosystems worldwide have formal protection.

Some places are already acting on that. Conservation International and Save the Waves have helped set up 30 Surf Protected Areas in Indonesia, Peru and Costa Rica, which give legal protection to a break and the reefs, mangroves and beaches around it. Most of them are in Indonesia, where local communities help run them.