VOLUME 24 / NO.1 / JANUARY 08 VOLUME 24 / NO.3 / MAY 08 77 TIDE CHARTS The Surfrider Foundation is a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world’s oceans, waves and beaches, for all people, through conservation, activism, research and education. Publication of The Surfrider Foundation A Non-Profit Environmental Organization P.O. Box 6010 San Clemente, CA 92674-6010 Phone: (949) 492-8170 / (800) 743-SURF (7873) Web: www.surfrider.org / E-mail: [email protected] 77 victories since 1/06. The Surfrider Foundation is striving to win 150 environmental campaigns by 2010. For a list of these victories please go to: 77 www.surfrider.org/whoweare6.asp Chief Executive Officer So Cal Field Coordinator Jim Moriarty Nancy Hastings Chief Operating Officer Puerto Rico Field Coordinator Michelle C. Kremer, Esq. Leon Richter Director of Chapters Oregon Field Coordinator Aerial view of red tide off the coast of La Jolla. Edward J. Mazzarella Charlie Plybon Environmental Director Oregon Policy Coordinator Chad Nelsen Pete Stauffer Director of Marketing & California Policy Coordinator Communications Joe Geever Matt McClain Washington Policy Coordinator Director of Development Jody Kennedy Humpback whale breaching. Steve Blank Save Trestles Coordinator Assistant Environmental Director Stefanie Sekich Graphic rendition of the avian flu virus. Mark Rauscher Ventura Watershed Coordinator Direct Mail Manager Paul Jenkin Jenna Holland Controller Embrace Your Natural Lumps and Bumps National Grants Manager Toni Craw (HIGH) Lori A. Booth Accounting Assistant You know those random-looking bumps on humpback whales’ flippers? Membership Manager Ryan Johnson Well, they have just inspired a breakthrough in aerodynamic design. Olaf Lohr Cash Receipts/Mail Order It seems that the application of tubercle bumps—like those found on Director of Global Relations Jill Tierney humpbacks—to the blades of wind turbines, fans, flippers, wings and Lia Colabello Content Manager airfoils dramatically increases efficiency and performance. Airfoils fitted Coastal Management Tracey Armstrong, MBA with tubercle bumps showed much higher lift efficiency and greater Coordinator Marketing Manager Rick Wilson Laura Mazzarella stall resistance than identical airfoils without them. So comes the birth Water Quality Coordinator Office Manager of WhalePower, tubercle technology developed by Dr. Frank E. Fish Mara Dias Vickie McMurchie (yes that is really his name) and Stephen Dewar. The technology is a Central Coast Regional Manager Membership Assistant patented design that will be applied to all types of turbines, pumps, Sarah Corbin Emily Hughes compressors or fans. The company is even in negotiations with a number Florida Regional Manager Chief Financial Officer of manufacturers who make everything from hovercraft fans to the tiny Ericka D’Avanzo Christopher Keys, CPA fans that keep laptops cool. Northeast Regional Manager Director of Technology John Weber Alan Hopper Litigation Manager Technology Consultant Pandemic and Coastal Flooding Biggest Threats Across The Pond Angela Howe, Esq. Mark Babski (LOW) What scares the Brits as much as Bird Flu? Coastal flooding! In the 2008 BOARD OF DIRECTORS MAKING WAVES Staff UK’s first published national security report, Prime Minister Gordon Chair Vipe Desai Managing Editor – Tracey Armstrong Brown stated that the highest threat currently faced by Britain is an Layout/Design – Casey Holland C.J. Olivares influenza-type pandemic, which could kill between 50,000 and 750,000 Wing Lam Contributors: Ed Mazzarella, Chad Nelsen, people in the UK. The second-highest risk reported was coastal Vice-Chair Greg Perlot Joe Geever, Mark Rauscher, flooding. The report warned of the danger of a repeat of coastal floods Megan Bailiff Michael Marckx Claire Macdonald similar to those in 1953 (which could affect hundreds of thousands of Secretary Sergio Mello homes) or of the flooding that hit the river Severn last year. Yikes! Lower Michelle Duval Bill Rosenblatt FOUNDING ADVISORY BOARD on the list of threats are other forms of infectious disease, river flooding Yvon Chouinard Tom Curren Board Steve Shipsey Steve Pezman Jericho Poppler Bartlow and extreme weather-related events linked to climate change. Laura Cantral David Wilmot Bruce Johnston D. Dwight Worden Diedra Funcheon Ride Tide—From The Backyard To The Ocean 2008 ADVISORY BOARD (LOW GETTING LOWER) “Red tide” the harmful blooms of algae that pose risks to humans and Advisory Board Chairman Advisory Board Manager Shaun Tomson Jim Kempton sea life and make water unfit for swimming, may be worsened by the activities that go on in your own backyard. The small streams that run through neighborhoods play a critical role in filtering out the nitrogen that feeds the algae blooms. A new study published by 31 scientists from across the country in the journal Nature sheds new light on streams’ role as a nitrogen filter. “Excess nitrogen in streams is caused in large part by human activities, particularly overuse of nitrogen-based fertilizers, says Patrick Mulholland, the study’s lead author and a researcher with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, “and as nitrogen accumulates in increasingly larger bodies of water, it feeds the harmful algae growth that leads to red tide.” The streams included in the study were located across a wide variety of regions used for many different uses so scientists were able to get a “Save Trestles” die-hard activists Michael Metcalf and Jerry Collamer in the broad perspective on how streams act as nitrogen filters. sea of protestors. Cover photo by Eppic Surf/Branimir Kvartuc 2 | www.surfrider.org GRASSROOTS WIKIS & CLOUD ACTIVISM By now everyone knows I’m a bit of a geek. Before I came to power, combined with the interconnectivity via the Internet ... Surfrider Foundation, I had been steeped in software and the will herald in a myriad of new era applications and potential. Web. Now I’m hip-deep in coastal activism. Consider the following equation: Technology and activism not only intersect, they share DNA. Large number of people In this post I want to talk about two concepts that keep swirl- + Common mission to frame collaboration ing around in my head; grassroots wikis and cloud activism. + Connectedness via networks and toolsets Grassroots adj. [gras-roots] Involving the common people This equals a potentially potent force, applied directly at the (rather than an exclusive group) protection and enjoyment of oceans, waves and beaches. Wiki n. [wik-ee]. Collaborative effort edited by anyone who has I see a network of Surfrider Foundation entities and activ- access to it. ists all over this planet, tied together by not only a common mission, but a common set of tools. Any pulp mill, anywhere The word “grassroots” might make you think of a political cam- on the globe, can be fought by connecting local activists paign or an environmental movement, etc. That makes sense. to established singular groups of three pulp mills that are What is a bit different is when it’s mixed with the somewhat loosely collaborating and sharing resources ... fighting gross new phenom of wikis. Wikis make many people think of Wiki- pollution in Chile, Oregon and Tasmania. The “Hold Onto pedia, but Linux and other entities really paved the way for a Your Butt” campaign, which was conceived by a Chapter, collective, group effort ... and an effort that answers to a larger now is a global campaign ... routinely sharing videos, press mission rather than a company’s next quarter earnings. For a clippings, strategies via listserves, regional conferences and better understanding of the power of wikis, read Wikinomics. e-mail. Jack Johnson’s upcoming tour will be a platform for a global campaign around plastic awareness and single-use Surfrider Foundation, in my mind, is a mix of these two con- plastic reduction. cepts. It involves all people along coastlines. And it involves people from all over the planet. I have seen this first hand. I The Surfrider Foundation has a mission that scales elegantly. saw it a few nights ago at the San Diego Chapter meeting ... We hardly ever have to correct a Chapter or an affiliate by in fact I see it at every Chapter meeting I’ve ever been to. We telling them they are off mission. It seems to self-police (much are “of the people.” We are a grassroots entity through and like Wikipedia). through. But we are more than that as we—the 80 entities around the world that operate under our flag—are in the pro- The reason this all matters is crystal clear to me. Our cess of creating and refining a very serious collaborative effort, oceans are in crisis mode. Our beaches are being taken a wiki. away. The number of breaks is finite, and decreasing. Fish- eries are collapsing. Am I just merging trendy jargon? I don’t think so. If you study what is working in today’s flat world it is open, transparent ef- We need to understand how we can employ every possible forts that intersect and are accessible to all people. tool on the face of this earth to point towards our mission. If we’re really going to make a difference then we need to live at This is important because we are well positioned for global the cutting edge of policy advancement, grassroots organizing trends. It also helps us better understand how to nurture and toolset activation. This has absolutely nothing to do with growth, but not smother it. technology. I’m talking about harnessing toolsets’ maximum potential and pointing that power at accomplishing real, un- Another concept is cloud computing. The layman’s transla- derstandable victories according to our mission. tion of what that means is that there is a massive amount of computing power now tied together via the largest network —Jim Moriarty ever built (the ‘net). Those clusters or grids of computers are CEO Surfrider Foundation enabling a different kind of processing to happen.