Tide of Activism : Surfers around the country become active in trying to detect and prevent ocean pollution.

“We’ve saved a million waves,” a recorded voice chirped in my ear one evening last week. It seems that even the Surfrider Foundation answering machine these days is speaking in the proud tones of the contemporary eco-active surfer.

I was calling because I’d heard about rising surfer consciousness and the foundation’s role in that. There was plenty more to hear--about statewide efforts, but also about specific plans for Ventura County.

One of those I heard from was Rex Thomas, president of this county’s Surfrider chapter, who said the group will be paying increasing attention to “anything that impacts on the ocean--or goes into it.”

Another was Ventura County chapter member and Environmental Chairman Mike Pedicini, who recalled those days in the ‘70s when the rain raised the chances of ocean runoff from the sewer plant at the foot of Ventura’s California Street, but surfers mostly shrugged and went about their paddling.

“Then things got worse and worse,” said Pedicini.

This brand of vigilance has already sprouted into what some would call militancy elsewhere. Last year, Surfrider filed a suit to stop two mills from dumping waste into a Humboldt County harbor. Former Rep. Pete McCloskey (a Republican) and San Francisco attorney Mark Massara won a $100-million judgment you might have heard about.

Not as well publicized was the penalty aspect of the outcome. Rather than mandating a payment into a general fund that could go away from the locality where the problem was, the judgment stipulated that the companies had to significantly limit the pollutants being put into the surf.

This, by the way, is the idea behind the local Blue Water Task Force. Local pollution will be pursued and mitigated at its source, wherever or whoever that may be.

Armed with Coli-Counter test kits, they are collecting ocean samples weekly for testing. This is brave volunteerism, since, like the storied canaries in the coal mines, surfers in the ocean are “the ones to expire first if there’s something nasty there.”

This grim observation comes from the Surfrider Foundation’s science coordinator, Dr. Scott Jenkins, who collects data from the Ventura chapter and others nationwide, and uses it to press for coastal cleanups. So far, there are no results to disclose, but Jenkins said he thinks highly of the efforts in Ventura County. Active membership here is estimated at about 100.

“They’re one of our fastest growing chapters and there’s a lot of talent there,” he said.

I’m happy to report this observation about our local surfers, especially because the good doctor of oceanography is comparing them to other activists with Blue Water Task Force operating nationwide. This very morning, there probably are task force members sampling the oceans for coliform bacteria--a polite term for fecal matter--in waters from Puget Sound to Kennebunkport. (That last location Jenkins specified by name.)

Nationwide, members of the Surfrider Foundation do this work for no pay. The “audience” for this data-gathering effort is local government--our county Health Services Agency, for instance, which draws on such statistics to determine whether local sewer facilities are adversely affecting local rivers and beaches.

Many local surfers, said Ventura chapter co-founder Peter Smith, are “old enough to see a decline in water quality. And we have the professional skills to become active about it.”

Though no Ventura test figures are available, Pedicini said he suspects that not only storm drain runoff with animal and chemical wastes but also petroleum, battery acid and other toxics are flushing into the county’s beach water as a result of the recent rains.

There’s no telling how accurate Pedicini’s hunch is, but I do recall a remark of the first national director of the Surfriders, David Saltman.

“Surfers know what’s going on in the water,” Saltman once said. “They’re in it, and they take it very personally.”

David Pontecorvo, the most regular of this area’s water testers and a 20-year surfer here, said he hasn’t been affected by toxics in the surf, so far as he knows. But, he said, “my brother-in-law is susceptible.” Then Pontecorvo added that he’s looking for volunteer help from surfers in the testing effort.

These are not shrinking violets, these surf riders. In fact, they may more closely resemble Scarlett O’Hara, defending Tara from Yankee marauders. (By the way, about one of five of Surfrider’s national membership of 15,000 is female.)

“Say a passionate golfer loses his green to a developer,” offered Smith. “You can build another course somewhere. With surfing it’s different--once it’s polluted, it’s gone forever. You can plant more turf but not more surf.”

You could still be thinking, “but these are surfers, they can’t be into this kind of stuff for serious, dude.” And you could be wrong. Recently a telephone hot line for surfers, unrelated to Surfrider Foundation, began carrying daily messages on bacteria levels at various Ventura and Los Angeles county surf spots.

“It’s great being underestimated,” Saltman, the former national director, told me. Then he read me a letter Pete McCloskey sent the Louisiana Pacific lawyers when he was working out the settlement with them.

“Sixty-two percent of my clients (in that case) prefer surfing over sex,” the letter read. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

RIDING THE WAVE

* For Ventura Chapter Surfrider Foundation membership call 646-6541 (Mark Halvorsen).

* To volunteer for Blue Water Task Force call 652-0123 (David Pontecorvo).

* A call to Surf Line--the hot line on wave conditions and bacterial levels at surfing hot spots in Ventura and Los Angeles counties--costs $1.50. The number is (213) 976-7873.

* For information on national activities of Surfrider Foundation, call 1-800-743-SURF. They also have new science curriculum materials for teachers on coastal environments and dangers to water quality.