When Matt Pensyl moved to Duluth from San Diego in 2008, he sold his surfboards. As he wrote in an email interview, “I thought my surfing days were behind me.”

Then his wife, “Bless her heart,” discovered that Minnesota harbored a budding chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting water quality, beach access, and threatened surf breaks. Pensyl got involved. (Fellow Surfrider member Graeme Thickins described him as “kind of a master at organizing events.”) Now he is helping the chapter stage a local celebration of International Surfing Day.

On Saturday, June 19th—after Grandma’s Marathon—the Minnesota-Superior chapter of the Surfrider Foundation will host a free, everyone-welcome celebration at Bayfront Park in Duluth. A beach cleanup will follow on Sunday, June 20th (the summer solstice and date of the worldwide Surfing Day celebrations).

Laying foundations

“If it weren’t for my then-10-year-old daughter, I would never have had a Surfrider sticker on my vehicle,” wrote Pensyl. “While I was on a deployment in 2002, she decided she would like to go to surf camp over the summer in San Diego. When I returned, she convinced me that I also should learn with her. While I put up my best fight at the age of 32, I just couldn’t win that battle. Next thing I knew, surfing was consuming my every free moment.”

Chapters of the Surfrider Foundation around the world celebrate International Surfing Day with concerts, beach clean-ups, film showings and educational events. The foundation defines the day as: “A day to give thanks and go surfing … organizers aim to raise awareness of the state of our oceans, waves and beaches and help protect and preserve these recreation areas.” Surfrider has over 50,000 active members participating in dozens of US and international chapters.

As for the Minnesota-Superior chapter, Pensyl said, “We are still in very early stages [of development], in an area not normally associated with the surfing culture.

“Getting people involved requires some important groundwork and foundation-building. That is where we are—the phase of showing our local communities that we are a concerned group of residents, that we have a great mission and core group of supporters, and that we like to accomplish our mission in a very down-to-earth and fun way.”  

The chapter’s first official event was a Park Point beach clean-up at the Coldwater Surf Fest in June 2009. Since then, they have worked on educational and restoration projects with Minneapolis City Parks for Earth Day 2009, International Surfing Day 2009 and Earth Day 2010.

Tackling issues

A little piece of Pensyl’s San Diego past has followed him to Duluth. The San Diego chapter of the Surfrider Foundation originated an anti-littering campaign called “Hold Onto Your Butt.” Inspired by the example, Stefan Ronchetti, the chair of the Minnesota-Superior chapter, has sought permission from the Minnesota Department of Transportation to post signs at freeway off-ramps. That effort is still underway. If successful, the chapter will post signs “encouraging people to stop littering our landscape with their cigarette butts.”

A sort of ocean equivalent of the “Hold Onto Your Butts” campaign is the Surfrider Foundation’s national “Rise Above Plastics” program. The foundation is urging citizens and business owners to pledge to reduce their use of single-use plastics, such as plastic bags and tableware. 

Far from the ocean, Pensyl and Thickin expect the Surfrider chapter to continue to grow. After all, Thickin pointed out, if its thousands of lakes are taken into consideration, “Minnesota has more miles of coastline than all of California and Florida combined.”