EL SEGUNDO, California -- The quest for the perfect wave has always been the holy grail of surfing.
An entire culture and industry revolves around the fantasy of climbing over an untracked sand dune or hacking through a thick jungle to find a pristine and perfect wave.
But there are a limited number of places in the world where the proper combination of swell action, ocean bottom contours, and local weather conditions naturally combine to create the consistent, fast-breaking waves surfers need.
Sometime this fall, however, The Surfrider Foundation, an international surfing advocacy and environmental group will anchor a construction barge off Dockweiler State Beach in El Segundo, California, and begin building the first artificial surfing reef in the United States.
The reef is intended to compensate for damage done to an already-existing surf spot when Chevron built a 900-foot-long rock groin at El Segundo to protect its oil loading and unloading facility during the 1983-84 El Niño winter. The groin changed the sand distribution patterns and changed the beach profile, wrecking the waves for surfing.
As a condition of the construction the oil giant agreed to pay Surfrider US$100,000 toward the study of artificial reef design and $200,000 toward its construction. Fifteen years later, it's finally a go.
The completed reef will be a 100-yard-wide vee pointed into the prevailing swell direction made from Volkswagon-sized geotextile bags filled with sand.
Coastal engineer and surfer Dave Skelly said that even if the reef works as planned, it still won't be a world-class surf break.
"You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," said Skelly, "If someone came to me and said 'you can build a surf spot anywhere on Earth' I wouldn't pick El Segundo." A lot of our design was dictated by money. We were given permits for about three times as much sand fill as we can actually afford to do, so we had to reconfigure the reef a little."
Using computerized wave-modeling techniques, the configuration of the giant sandbags has been designed in a way that Skelly believes will dramatically improve the existing surf at El Segundo, "We're going to trick it up a little."
Not everyone is thrilled at the prospect of surfers taking such a hands-on approach to generating good waves. Within the Surfrider Foundation and among surfers at large there are many who believe the project undermines surfing's image as an ecologically sensitive sport.
"We're caught in a bind," said Surfrider coastal programs manager Chad Smith, "We want to protect surf and restore a lost surf break, but we really don't want to turn Southern California into a Disneyland of artificial surf breaks. But if this one works, there's going to be a lot of pressure to build more."
"Artificial reefs like this are a deal with the devil designed to alleviate overcrowding and the degradation of our surf spots," said Mark Massara, the Sierra Club's coastal campaign director and a well-known environmental attorney.
"But if this is how we're going to save surfing, we're in a lot of trouble. I'd hate to see artificial reefs become a commonly used tool. It tends to take the wild and the wilderness right out of the sport."
Skelly defends his project, pointing out that El Segundo is a heavily urbanized, industrial location where the shoreline has already been dramatically altered by human hands.
"To me a surf reef is nothing more than a tool in coastal management. Just the fact that man is in the picture changes the environment. If someone asked me to design a reef in the wilderness I wouldn't do it, but in an urban setting I don't have as much trouble with that."
Meanwhile, across the globe, one artificial surfing reef has been completed in Australia and another is under construction. Unlike the El Segundo project, the two Australian reefs make no pretense of restoring anything. They're intended to improve recreational surfing, period.
So far reports are mixed from surfers at Cables Reef, where the completed reef lies. Both the finished reef and the one in progress at Narrowneck reef have live Web feeds, so surfers and non-surfers can ring in on the debate.
