Safeguarding places to hang ten and shoot the curl is an opportunity to simultaneously mitigate climate change, fuel tourism and help surrounding ecosystems, new research has shown.
“There is a growing conservation movement regarding coastal areas that host surf breaks,” said Jacob Bukoski of Oregon State University, one of the study’s co-authors. “Earlier research showed that surf breaks tend to be biodiversity hotspots, but no one had looked at the stocks of carbon held within these ecosystems – carbon that could drive climate change if disturbed and lost.”
In study published in Conservation Science & Practice, Bukoski and collaborators identified more than 88 million tonnes of “irrecoverable” carbon in the land-based ecosystems surrounding 3,602 surf breaks around the globe.
Surf breaks, nearshore areas whose special mix of coastal and seafloor characteristics creates waves surfers crave, are often found in or near ecosystems that are conservation priorities, such as coral reefs and mangrove forests.