Taking the Tube to Work

Taking the tube to work

by Sam Bleakley

  

I have a favourite Californian surfing t-shirt illustrated by Rick Rietveld with Einstein playing a Hawaiian slack-key guitar against a background of grinding waves and tropical vegetation alongside the slogan ‘imagination is more important than knowledge’ (Einstein’s most famous catchphrase after E = mc²). Just giving Einstein a ukelele, reflective sunglasses and decking him in surf garb in t-shirt illustration made him look like a wise old dude from Hawaii’s North Shore. Reitveld’s Einstein is a grisly legend who might have discovered the theory of relativity not from complex equations but from going backwards over the falls on a monster windblown day. Wipeout + e = mc2. The high culture of scientific reasoning and intellect meets pop culture, saying ‘surfers have brains too’.

Riding waves is all about imagination, and surfers have been tagged as missing out in the knowledge department. ‘Beach bums’ in the 1950’s, ‘hippies’ and ‘drop-outs’ in the 1960’s, ‘animals’ in the ‘We’re Tops Now!’ aggro era that culminated in punk, surfers have struggled to present an image close to ‘intellectual’ or ‘academic’. Yet the fusion of surfing and academia has been well represented. For example, late Californian Ricky Grigg was a big wave North Shore pioneer during the 1960s, winner of the Sunset Duke Kahanamoku (the World Title of the day), and a leading Professor of Oceanographer and coral reef expert at the University of Hawaii. One of Britain’s most prolific competitors in the 1980s, Professor Paul Russell, is also a world-class oceanographer, who throughout his contest career fused his detailed understanding of the sea with his powerful, flowing surfing to win two European titles.      

In the wake of Russell and Grigg’s research on the conditions that produce waves, it would seem clear that the academic arena in which surfers could shine is the study of their liquid environment and its flux. Consider the massive number of variables that enable us to surf – the meteorological and oceanographic phenomena that generate swell, the geographic location of the break, the geology of the reef, not to mention the global industry that has supplied your wetsuit and (usually) petrochemicals-based surfboard. Combine this with the culture in which you are deeply embedded, the geography of coastlines and the psychological experience of riding a wave, and you’ve got a formula for some serious study.

Such study characterised the original so-called ‘surfing’ degree once run at the University of Plymouth, UK, as the Surf Science and Technology Bachelor of Science (BSc), and now housed at Cornwall College Newquay, as the Surf Science and Technology Foundation of Science (FdSc). Every March course manager Brender Willmott and students studying the course put on the SEED Surf Conference at the Atlantic Centre, gathering a powerful collection of academics, environmentalists, entrepreneurs and activitsts to share refreshing and pressing themes in surfing. Over the last two years, talks from the likes of Nick Hounsfield, Joe Taylor, Matt Knight, Hugo Tagholm, Adam Porter, Chris Hines, Malcolm Findlay, Gordon Fontaine, Helen Clare, Matt Button, Karl Fice Thomson, Andrew Cotton, Sam Lamiroy, Roger Mansfield and Luke Art have discussed surfing as therapy, eco-technolgies, community action, new media, techniques for surviving big wave hold-downs, British surf history, sustainability and green tourism. The strength and depth of the talks has been exceptional, and listeners, participants and students have left feeling excited about the state and future of surfing in the UK. Above all, the SEED Surf Conference is a reminder that ‘learning through surfing’, and surf-based education is something to be celebrated.

Of course Surf Science & Technology is not a ‘surfing’ degree, but an interdisciplinary study based around surfing, including an in-depth study of oceanography and meteorology, combined with contemporary practices in business, events and marketing, and the science and technology of manufacturing, plus massive hands on experience with coastal and adventure tourism and surf culture. Students are motivated by the fact that they are engaged with learning about topics that relate directly to surfing, something they love. Graduates have become innovators in events management, environmental conservation and surfboard manufacture, providing a healthy spark to the surfing industry. Importantly, the course inspires students to think against the grain, critically, and with creative vigour.

Surf Science & Technology was launched in 1999 in an era when the UK government aimed to get fifty per cent of school leavers into higher education, advocating that courses combine practical experience with serious academic study – to have a high ‘relevance’ factor. Surf Science attracts not just student’s who shape their identities around being surfers, and those contemplating a career in an industry connected with surfing, but also people who want to be future scientists, technologists and business innovators. It remains a unique and revolutionary course, the original vision of former British Masters Longboard Champion Dr Malcolm Findlay.

Malcolm has a copy of one of Ricky Grigg’s books Big Surf, Deep Dives and the Islands, signed ‘To Dr Malcolm Findlay; the pioneer of surfing academia.’ But Malcolm admits that the initial inspiration for the course can be attributed to the Geologist Professor Colin Williams as a result of attending the Student National Surfing contest in Newquay in 1998. He saw the University of Plymouth, an entrepreneurial and fast-growing ex-Polytechnic that had become one of the largest Universities in Britain, as a perfect site for a course based around the science and technology of surfing. Such opportunism was of course seen as a positive and negative, both filling a niche but also creating and exploiting a market opportunity.

“For years we had been closet surfers,” recalls Dr Findlay, affectionately known as ‘Doc’ in the local Bantham longboard community in South Devon where he lives. “We’d slip away early from work if it was six feet and offshore, every now and then turning up for lectures with our hair dripping wet. Suddenly surfing was perceived as an asset.” Malcolm was asked to carry out market research and then was entrusted with the role of Programme Leader for the Surf Science & Technology degree. “We went to the surf industry and they wanted graduates with a broad range of knowledge, skills and aptitudes, so we put together the course in that vein, using the strengths of a number of different faculties, including technology, biology, marketing, marine studies and ocean science. Everything changes and education has to be organic and able to adapt. Chalk and talk teaching had become increasingly unfashionable as students searched for more interesting, interactive studies. Students were attracted to study Surf Science who may not have considered going to University, although they had the ability.”

The programme was exported to Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, one hour north of Margaret River, and the University of Hawaii. It is no longer availble at the University of Plymouth, but continues to thrive at Cornwall College Newquay with modules including Event Management, Marine Conservation, Surf Culture & History, Design & Production, Business & Law, Psychology, Health & Fitness, Media & Marketing, Politics of Sport, Environmental Dynamics and Surf Coaching. One of the impressive aspects to the course is how many students have joined the long-standing campaigns of Surfers Against Sewage and the now ferocious public debate concerning environmental disasters affecting the ocean.

I’d like to see the course broaden in the future to embrace more of the cultural, tourism, humanities and artistic aspect of surfing, with reference to style, idiosyncratic characters shaping a lifestyle, surfing as dance and poetic questions about the ‘feel’ of a board or a wave, not its technical dimensions. Surfing has an expressive side and this is just as open to study and debate. But as both Malcolm Finlday and Brender Willmott agree, “whenever you get a group of people together with a common interest around surfing, the spirit of surfing will certainly emerge.” Right now, that spirit is burning bright. Learning through surfing has an exciting future. Watch this space...