Nuisance In The Line Up

I surf not just to experience something so formidable as the ocean but to return to peace in a welcome kind of solitude. I step off the land that holds all my problems, and at least briefly, experience a kind of child-like joy, unadulterated by the ping of a work email, the racing anxious thoughts over some conversation I had the previous night, the din of news, the world of fears made up by considering the future. Surfing is a grounding experience, yes, but also an escape, a getaway from problems. It is for most of us who surf. That’s what I was doing in Santa Cruz visiting my brother, attempting to get further away from my daily life for a moment, to surf, seeking a time where I could slow down.

In the water with my brother, I heard someone say, oh shit as they started to talk. I thought maybe this person was starting a little argument with some other local, maybe someone getting in their way on a wave, some anger made both out of safety and ego — a typical thing in Santa Cruz, like much of California. Turning around I saw the long-boarder who I heard talking paddling toward me. As she paddled, directly beside her was a large, fully grown sea otter. Its head, silver with age and near the size of a cantaloupe. The big furry creature had popped up just beside her, and a near twenty feet away from me. This was closer than I had ever seen one. It was floating about in the canopy of the kelp forest near Pleasure Point, smashing some shell to bits on its belly with a stone whose cracks ricocheted across the water. As the session went on, I’d see it pop up in new spots but in the same general area. At one point some fifteen feet from me I watched as it munched some invertebrate.

Yes, the waves down in Santa Cruz are remarkable, something that is seldom seen on any coastline across the world—consistent point break waves along the cliff edges, full of kelp forests you navigate on the wave as you enjoy your ride. Anyone living in Santa Cruz might say the sight of a sea otter is as commonplace as a sycamore on a city street. But for me, someone who surfs a choppy beach break, seeing the otter was special.

I talked with the woman who I originally heard call out the otter in front of her. She told me that a few days before at Steamer Lane, another point break in town, an otter had attacked someone and stole their surfboard. Two years ago, something similar had happened. Scientists discovered that the otter was pregnant. She was pissed, sick of the surfers in her home.

I wasn’t worried the otter that day would take my board. I’m more nervous seeing a sea lion, fully aware of their penchant for fucking with people, rushing them, knocking them, generally harassing anyone, or anything, they choose. They like to bully people in the water. But if the otter did attack my board, in the moment I would be freaked out of course, but I’d likely understand. This is her home. I am only here for a brief moment like the rest of us, leaving the land to become a momentary disturbance to the animals that live here, as we humans seem to be wherever we newly land.

I could see her frustration—to see the ongoing fiberglass boards coasting atop her home, the knife-like fins of the board slicing through the blades of kelp. It was a nuisance on her home.

Due to fur trapping in the 1800s the southern sea otter, the ones here in California, were once on the brink of extinction, and yet today they thrive in Santa Cruz. This was largely due to the expansion of a colony of otters found off the tumultuous coast of Big Sur, whose danger made it impossible for fur trappers to kill them. From that colony, many of the historical areas are alive and well again, slowly rebounding, one otter pup at a time, in turn ensuring the stability of the kelp forests themselves and the richly diverse ecosystem that so many species rely on—some of which we eat as well. Their saving has been essential in the important ecosystem and carbon sink that is the kelp forests.

For all these years, for the horrors many of their populations have faced across the Pacific, the otters of Santa Cruz thrive, through rough storms, consuming urchin after urchin, their lives down here a marvel to much of the world, living patiently through their close encounter with an extinction entirely of our own, human, doing.

The otters, slowly, are rebounding. Patiently, they wait. They survive.

We enter the water to some degree to disembark from the mores of the land that hold us down. On the water, wealth, style, age, literacy, quality of equipment—it all means nothing. It is the quality of the self to meet the water that matters most. Status dies. And yet, we surfers are not leaving reality, no matter how much we believe this to be true at times. Maybe we leave the land, the job, the fight, the feed, but we don’t leave the world. We, on our fiberglass and foam, still encroach. We enter a new world, as a bumbling interloper, that must respect that this is not our home. This is the Pacific, that we as humans push, most especially today, to its limits of destruction. It’s justified, then, to see us be pushed around by sea lions, or have our board chomped and stolen by a sea otter. This is not our home. I see it as a reminder of this, a soft demand for respect. This is not just a play house for us. The world lives here. And it is only fair that that world, in whatever way, reminds us that we are not the only ones here. It may be our getaway, but like with anywhere else, we must respect, firstly, those that call it home.

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