Sustainable Surfing

These days, most of my writing about surfing appears in academic publications, which means all my work is hidden behind really expensive paywalls. Because the main role of academics is to contribute to public knowledge, that the public can't access our work is one of the terrible paradoxes and most unethical things about contemporary academia - we're bound by our industry to publish in academic spaces. It's why I feel a responsibility to write here and in other mainstream and accessible places as well. I've not been very good and keeping to that commitment, but writing more on this blog one of my goals for this year.

In the mean time, a new book with lots of research about surfing, Sustainable Surfing (edited by Greg Borne and Jess Ponting), has offered full and free access to anyone for the next 60 days. I'm not sure you can print it out (people more clever than I can likely find ways around that), but if you're interested in reading some work on sustainability and surfing, you can check out this link (click the book):

This book is crazy expensive to buy, which is one of the reasons it's really hard for researchers to get their academic publications out there, so this is a great chance to check out some of the work happening in this area. It's far from comprehensive in terms of the field, but no book ever is, and it gives a good taster of ideas being worked on.