Management Guidelines for Surfing Resources
Policy 16 of the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement 2010 (NZCPS), under the Resource Management Act (1991), provides a legislative framework that identifies and protects surfing resources. While the legislation was ground-breaking as the world’s first environmental policy to specifically identify surf breaks as protected spaces, Aotearoa New Zealand still lacked effective implementation because there were no clear, quantitative measures or guidelines describing the oceanographic or geomorphic characteristics of the coastal zone that contribute to the functionality of a surf break.
The Aotearoa New Zealand Association for Surfing Research (ANZASR) is the successor to a 3-year research project funded by the Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment. The project, entitled Remote Sensing, Classification and Management Guidelines for Surf Breaks of National and Regional Significance, considered surfing resources across the country, held stakeholder engagement meetings, undertook surveys, intensive fieldwork, and deployed monitoring systems to better understand Aotearoa’s surfing resources. The research project culminated in the establishment of monitoring stations and the publication of journal articles and the Management Guidelines for Surfing Resources.
To ensure the latest research and developments are incorporated into the Management Guidelines for Surfing Resources, annual reviews and multi annual revisions are ongoing projects for the ANZASR.
Research Priorities for Surf Science and Surfing Resource Management
The ANZASR aims to facilitate progress in the disciplines of surf science and surfing resource management through collaboration. An ongoing project for the group is to encourage participation in the identification of “Research Priorities for Surf Science and Surfing Resource Management”. A project outcome is to produce a multi-authored publication based on case studies. The ANZASR will facilitate the compilation of cases over 2022 through a combination of workshops and online discussions. All contributed material will be compiled into a database that will be readily shared. Themes from the contributed cases will be analysed and classified and contributors invited to participate in this process will be listed as co-authors of the publication.
If you would like to contribute to the project, we are looking for case studies that exemplify tangible, specific and new research needs. To contribute a Case Study, please download a Word version of the simple case study template from here, complete it, and send it to info@anzasr.org
Monitoring
We currently monitor surf breaks in 3 different ways: Automated camera systems; hydrographic data collection; and, surfer location. The intent and an ongoing aim of the ANZASR is to maintain existing monitoring programs and expand on the monitoring network.
Automated camera systems collect images of the same area, or field of view, of a surf break every hour, every day, all year long. The images are processed onsite to provide us with image products that tell us about how the surf break is changing in both space and time. By surveying the land in the field of view of a camera we work out where each pixel is in real space. Knowing where each pixel is geographically allows us to make real measurements from each image. Using this we can quantitatively track how a surf break changes in both space and time.
Using high accuracy echo sounders and GPS systems we collect thousands collocated depth of soundings. These depth soundings, combined with topographic survey data, provide the necessary information to build terrain maps of the seafloor and beach/coast area. This data allows us to understand how and why surf breaks function in the way they do. By repeating surveys we can understand how the seafloor changes and what this means for surfing wave quality.
Tracking the ride of a surfer by GPS provides many research avenues, from user numbers to length of ride. This has been successfully achieved by using surf-focused GPS consumer products, conventional handheld GPS and now the focus is shifting to internally developed, high resolution, accurate tracking devices.