6 Surfers Who Spoke Truth To Power

Prominent surfers have been taking a stand on issues from the Vietnam War to their right to personal grooming nonconformity ever since the sport garnered enough of an audience to take note. 

Whether it be Miki Dora flipping the bird at the camera as part of his general dissatisfaction at the proliferation of surfing lifestyle, Christian Fletcher’s mohawk and Marlboro’s at a time of corporate sanitisation of the sport, or Dave Rastovich’s stand against annual cetacean massacres in Japan, the range of issues are as varied as waves we ride. 

Even the very act of riding waves, instead of being at work paying taxes and the mortgage has been regarded as a form of protest by some, if perhaps not quite Emily Davison throwing herself under the King’s horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby levels.

Alas, in our current era, while our leading exponents enjoy direct, unfiltered access to millions via their own social media accounts, they’re more likely to represent corporate greed than rail against it, taking to Insty to endorse kombucha, skin care, protein bars or merely their own reflection, rather than speak out on any real issues, much less anything that might jeopardise their bottom line.

But it hasn’t always been that way.

 

 

Heath Joske

While journo Sean Doherty deserves as much recognition for spearheading FightForTheBight’s hard-fought victory against Norwegian oil company Equinor which were cancelled as of early last week, Joske too deserves credit for his leadership.

Despite all the paddle circles and placards, the image of the South Aussie surfer thrusting 300 letters of protest in CE Eldar Sætre’s face at Equinor’s AGM in Oslo last May stands out from an excellent campaign.

With an intimate, confrontational quality, both sides breathing the same air, you don’t need to be an expert on body language to decipher whom of the pair has the moral higher ground, reminiscent of a dishevelled Bob Geldof telling Thatcher to cancel the VAT on Band Aid. “With implications that could destroy our country’s economy, coastline, marine life and our culture,” Joske said during the campaign, “the connection to the ocean we have, the importance to Aborigines, the common thread (is) that we just don’t want the Bight opened up for any offshore oil and gas exploration whatsoever.” 

 

Tom Carroll

Taking a moral stand is one thing after retirement or during the twilight of a career, but when Tom Carroll led a contingent boycotting South African tour events due to apartheid in 1985, he did it both as reigning ASP World Champion and to the dismay of his sponsor Shaun Tomson (with Instinct). Notably joined by Martin Potter (who grew up in SA),  Tom Curren and Cheyne Horan, all of whom were prepared to forgo the tour points, the Sydney power surfer described the boycott as “a basic humanitarian stand.” While the ASP continued to hold annual events in SA throughout the apartheid era, unlike most major sporting bodies (the IOC & FIFA expelled South Africa 1964-88), a decade later, former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke said of Carroll’s stand that he knew of “no example in the history of Australian sport where a champion has been prepared to put principles so manifestly in front of his or her own interests.” 

 

 

Cori Schumacher 

A 3x ASP World Longboard Champion (2000,01,10) and current Carlsbad City Councillor, Schumacher has long since advocated on a number of issues including gender equality and LGBTQ rights. Back in 2011, as the reigning ASP Longboard World Champ, she boycotted the Swatch Girls Pro China. “I have deep political and personal reservations with being a part of any sort of benefit to a country that actively engages in human-rights violations, specifically those in violation of women,” she wrote in an email to ASP administrators, publicly revealing her broad and unflinching worldview via an excellently-written Inertia article, “Why I’m Boycotting China”. Schumacher also became involved with the San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice to oppose the war in Iraq, petitioned against Roxy’s controversial Steph Gilmore 2012 video, and more recently made a point of correcting Keala Kennelly’s assertion to being the first “openly gay surf world champ”, having wed longtime partner Maria Cerda over a decade previous.

 

Maurice Cole

Spearheading the foundation of Surfrider Foundation Europe alongside Tom Curren in the early 90’s, Cole was particularly outspoken against French nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll in the South Pacific which was then continuing in the face of global outcry only a few years after French intelligence agents had bombed and sank Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, NZ. Cole has also been a longtime advocate for Indigenous Australians’ rights and led a delegation of aboriginal surfers to Hawaii in the 90’s. Writing in Surfing Life Magazine in the late 90’s, Cole criticised far-right anti-immigration One Nation Party leader Pauline Hanson and her growing popularity, pondering, “Are we on course to become the South Africa of the new millennium?”  The former Victorian State champ and charismatic shaper who created Curren’s reverse vee ‘92 title-winning boards also recognises his own shortcomings, rather than just finger-pointing: “The Baby Boomers, all we’ve done is rape and pillage the planet, and basically put the whole word in debt.”

 

Isabel Letham

Born in 1899 in Sydney, Isabel Letham became known as the first Australian to ride a surfboard, when the Duke Kahanamoku gave a demonstration of Hawaiian surfriding at Sydney’s Freshwater Beach and the 15-year-old Letham rode tandem with surfing’s global ambassador. A strong swimmer and diver at a young age in an era when the Archbishop of Sydney was advocating for gender segregated beaches, while women were granted the vote in 1902, being accepted in all traditionally male dominated aspects of life was still but a distant aspiration, and women were denied membership to surf life-saving clubs and regularly suffered harassment and intimidation in the water for decades to come. The pervading toxic masculinity which depressingly, still exists to a certain extent well over a century later, only makes Letham’s pioneering achievement even more impressive.  “I had been brought up to stand on my own two feet at a very early age,” she later said in an interview. “I was quite determined I was going to ride a surfboard.”

 

Fergal Smith

While ‘Surfer Grows Vegetables’ has never really been breaking news, ‘Pro Freesurfer Stops Flying’ was not only a radical departure from convention some 7 years ago, it still is today. The softly spoken, hard charging goofyfoot freesurfer refused to fly on planes on environmental grounds in 2013, while still sponsored by Analog, his CO2 aviation aversion pre-dating Greta Thunberg’s Flygskam (flight shame) movement by several years, and came at a time when environmentalism in surfing was at best tokenistic, at worse a thinly-veiled marketing campaign. While digging for a better tomorrow by starting organic CSA in Co Clare, he also ran in General Election for Green Party in Ran Green Party in 2016 “We need to have our basic needs met; clean air, clean water, local organic food… we need to get away from fossil fuels and into green energy, again this area will create much more jobs than burning coal and make us a greener, healthier country.” 

Cover photo: George Karbus