A lot of close comparisons exist between my two passions- surfing and rockfishing.

Both involve deciphering and building a skill set around natural, ever-changing forces. In the case of surfing, wave energy, in the case of fishing, biology. The learning is never done; one day is not like the last and this vast expanse of ocean that hosts both activities is in a constant state of flux. 

Another close parallel is that although there are organised elements in both - fishing clubs and competitions, boardriders clubs right up to pro surfing - the vast majority of practitioners in both activities are purely recreational. They're not involved in any organised activity whatsoever. Most of us when we go for a surf are just going for a surf. There's no club, no end goal, or structure to it whatsoever. We're not playing a game with scores, or winning or losing, at all.

Same for fishing. It's fun. We just want to ride a few waves or catch a fish.

According to the Ausplay survey of sports, in Australia 3.7% of surfing activity for 15+ was through a club or association, while 3.4% of fishing activity was through a club or association. That sounds about right. Even if we tripled those numbers, it's still an inescapable conclusion that for the overwhelming majority surfing is not a 'sport' in the recognised sense of the word.

Another parallel. Both activities involve accessing limited natural resources. Fish stocks and fishing spots are limited, as are waves and surf spots. No such limit really exists for, say, golf courses, or tennis courts, or footy grounds, or swimming pools, skateparks, or mountain bike tracks. There is no practical limit for those activities, and if there becomes one, it's easy to build more.

Here, a major difference starts to materialise. Access to resources and thus amenity, as the pinheads call it, is wired into recreational fishing at every level, most importantly through representative bodies and the Government. It's accepted that to improve the recreational fishing experience you need to enhance fish stocks, improve and increase fish habitat, build boat ramps and jetties. Similarly, constructing artificial reefs, installing Fish Aggregating Devices (FAD's), fish stocking, and resnagging rivers is all common practice.

The goal is to grow the pie, not just the number of people trying to get a slice of the existing pie.

Now, look at the websites of surfing's peak bodies, supposedly representing surfers, for any sign of increasing amenity or wave resources and you'll look in vain. The talk is of inclusion and increasing participation and improving physical and mental health but as for improving that experience for all these people? Nothing. For anyone with a primary school understanding of maths it's an easy concept to grasp. More people eating the same pie means less for everyone.

How could this simple physical fact escape our best and brightest administrators?

Fishing has found a way to identify and fund improvements to the resources that fishers rely on. Also unlike surfing, as a recreational fisher in NSW I pay a licence fee. $85 for three years. I don't grizzle even if I don't always directly benefit. I get political representation as a rec fisher and that seat at the table seems worth it to me.

Would something similar work for surfing, with its overwhelmingly recreational base? At present our peak bodies funnel money from taxpayers exclusively to the organised aspects of surfing despite that representing only a tiny fraction of surfers.

A much ballyhooed example recently of $1 million of Federal funding for female surfers goes exclusively to Surfing Australia to establish fifty new women’s boardrider clubs, provide free female judging, coaching and officials courses, and host an annual women’s development camp at the Hyundai Surfing Australia High Performance Centre (HPC).

What percentage of women surfers will this benefit? Unless the current numbers are way out of whack, only a tiny minority, the rest of whom will not be involved in organised surfing in any way, shape, or form.

It seems perfectly clear that the only way to improve the experience for recreational surfers is to create waves. And not private, for profit wavepools but publicly accessible artificial reefs. Wavepools are being sold to us in terms of their public goods. Improving mental health, physical fitness, inclusion, democratising surfing, helping disabled people etc etc. You name a modern buzzword or phrase which invokes warm, fuzzy feelings and the current crop of wavepool proprietors will be using it.

That seems a crock. Inclusion, of course, is depending on how much you are willing to pay. I priced two hours in the Sydney tub for my son and I at close to $600. Not including food or travel. That's half our yearly electricity bill. Half a board. A weekend at the Yamba pub surfing Angas twice a day. My wetsuit budget gone. Apart from a one and done visit at some point in the future, that excludes me.

The new Abu Dhabi Kelly Slater tub is even more exclusive. Around AUD $1,400 for a half-dozen waves over 90 minutes.

Quite clearly, privatisation of waves excludes many more than it includes, despite the modern rhetoric they employ of surfing as a public good.

I mused on this recently while surfing a new little sandbar. A freshly created surf spot after the last big bank busting swell. It wasn't world class by any means, just a fun wave with a beginning, middle, and end that offered a semi-reliable takeoff spot and two or three turns. A proper surf spot. I surfed it solo, I surfed it with a dozen grommets, I surfed with gals on twinnies and mids, it was fun everytime.

This is what we need to create.

Not world class barrels but user friendly, B-grade surf spots and lots of them.

The technology does exist. Palm Beach Reef produces a perfectly workable right-hander and a short left. The price is prohibitive though at $18.2 million. That was funded by a cost sharing deal between landholders and the council. That model might make sense at places like Belongil, for example, where well-heeled landowners might be prepared to invest in a reef with a dual purpose of improving surfing and reducing erosion.

The latest iteration of Waveco's artificial surfing reef, if proven to work, is more cost effective. A jigsaw assembled concrete dome that creates a short a frame for around half a million.

Put six of them between, say, North Kirra Surf Club and Tugun and you would transform miles of closeouts into reliable surf spots which would relieve pressure on the Superbank.

A similar array between Belongil and Brunswick Heads would take pressure off The Pass.

There's no environmental objection I could see. Quite the opposite. Marine organisms are structure agnostic. Every piece of structure creates habitat and immediately increases biodiversity.

One of two Offshore Artificial Reefs (OARs) dropped into thirty metres of water offshore from Forster, NSW, in 2023. The entire project cost $1 million drawn from the Recreational Fishing Trust, which is made up from both recreational fishing fees and governemnt funding. There are approximately 150 OARs around Australia.

How to get them built?

Funding could be via some sort of licence fee like recreational fishing, contingent on having some trustworthy and accountable peak body willing to advocate for recreational surfer interests. Or, straight up government funding based on improving public goods that are already being used to spruik private wavepools. Mental and physical health, inclusion etc etc.

Again, we would need some type of body prepared to advocate on our behalf. Unlike recreational fishing, which has dedicated Trusts with a charter to boost recreational fishing opportunities and benefits for the community, surfing is still stuck in a paradoxical situation where almost all the funding for our peak bodies goes into benefits for only a tiny percentage of the surfing community.

That can't last, can it?

//STEVE SHEARER

(Homepage image Steve Arklay)