Inside the Stanford Surf Club
‘We view the ocean as our temple’
The Stanford Surf Club, established in 2013, welcomed a new president at the start of the 2015-2016 school year.
A senior majoring in Earth Systems, president Zachary Ostroff is responsible for “changing the lens through which” the team “sees the ocean.” This lens that Zachary describes , on the club’s website, involves awareness about and activism towards protecting the ocean, an important goal given the growing effects of pollution and plastic consumption.
To give a sense of the extent of this impact, UNESCO provides some insightful statistics. Over 220 million tons of plastic are produced each year. In 2006, The United Nations Environment Program estimated every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic. As well as impacting humans, ocean pollution causes the deaths of over 100,000 marine mammals annually.
Screengrab from the Stanford Surf Club site
To understand the impact of these statistics and figures, I needed to look no further than freshman Dan Cohn, a member of the Stanford Surf Club. A San Diego native, Dan has spent a great deal of his time surfing along the West Coast and has certainly noticed the impact of ocean pollution, revealing he “comes across anything from plastic bottles to trash bags to fishing nets to a whole host of household items.”
He said: “Commonly after storms, you see the danger of potentially deadly bacteria due to storm runoff going into the oceans where we swim and surf. There are also visible signs of potential ocean pollution such as offshore oil rigs, which over the years have had a number of spills impacting the California coast.”
Dan also expressed his opinion on the global impact of ocean pollution, beyond what he experiences on a daily basis: “I think ocean pollution specifically is a major problem. When scientists find trash from Asia on the shores of California and vice versa, I think we need to treat this as a global problem and determine a solution where all countries unite to reduce pollution.”
Freshman Dan
He added: “One of the easiest ways we can help is by throwing away our trash properly and by trying to reuse bags and purchasing bio-degradable and eco-friendly items so they don’t end up in the ocean.”
With the Stanford Surf Team shifting its focus, the average person can also re-think how we as humans consider our relationship with the ocean. With or without a surfboard in hand, people are highly dependent on the resources enabled by a healthy ocean.
The risks created by ocean pollution, therefore, ought to be of concern to everyone.