Gulf Coast Surfers Are Suffering, Too — And Health Risks Are Unclear

“You can’t see the oil anymore, but you can taste it,” said Mcelroy, who surfed again last week and whose surf shop is down over 70% in business from last year since tourism in Alabama is almost nonexistent.

Gulf coast surfers and surf-related business are suffering despite good surf conditions.

When surfing was closed along a mere 14 miles of coast for 34 days in Huntington Beach due to the American Trader oil spill, the value of the lost recreational opportunity (beach going & surfing) was valued at $18 million.

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Intercepting Surfers

This is a graphical representation of typical surfing and beach going attendance patterns over a day for many places in the world. Surfers tend to visit the beach in the mornings and evening - when conditions are best and they are not at work. On the other hand beachgoing tends to happen mostly in the middle of the day. Surfers also tend to visit the beach throughout the week or when conditions are good, where as beach going more typically occurs on the weekends.

Understanding this pattern is very important when considering the economics of beach going.

Many studies on the economics of beach going rely on intercept surveys to collect their data. Intercept surveys that take place in person at a site and interview visitors while they are at the beach. It is also during this time that many attendance counts are conducted to estimate how many visitors use the beach in a given day or year.

These surveys are often conducted in the middle of the day when beach going is at its maximum. In these cases a large portion of the surf visitation may be missed. This will lead to an underestimate of the overall use of the beach and also disproportionately miss surfer visits.

This could have many implications about the value of the beach and its management.

When calculating the lost value associated with the American Trader oil spill, Chapman and Hanemann avoided this pitfall by surveying beach visitors from 6 AM to 6 PM and found that at some Orange County beaches surfers made up 10-20% of the beach visits. This is one of the only studies on beach economics that specifically made an effort to survey early and late to capture surfers.

We found a similar patter at Trestles.

Beach Closed

I woke up early this morning (thanks in part to the time change) to check the surf at my local beach. I was hoping that is swell would be showing:



Sadly, when I got down to the overlook, I was reminded that Laguna just experienced a massive 480,000 gallon sewage spill and the beaches were still closed.

That got me to thinking about all the surfers in town who wouldn't be surfing in Laguna this weekend. These surfers would either skip their surf session (like me) or would have to travel out of town to other surfing areas. In economic speak - they would either have lost the value of a surf session or would incur a higher travel cost to go somewhere else, which will reduce their consumer surplus (stoke) assuming all other things being equal (surf quality, etc.).

In February of 1990, the American Trader, dumped over 400,000 gallons of oil in the waters off of Huntington Beach. The spill closed 14 miles of beach for 34 days. Eight years and a ten week trial later a jury awarded the State of California $18 million. To arrive at that figure economists on both sides of the issue used the Travel Cost Method to estimate the non-market value of lost beach and surf recreation. (Click here for an surf-centric explanation).

Here are some numbers from the calculations:

Surfing Trips Lost: 28,290
Value of those trips: $18.75
Total consumer surplus lost: $530,438

Surf trips diverted to substitute site: 28,148
Extra cost associated with going to other site: $12.00
Total consumer surplus lost: $337,776

Back to the sewer spill, I wonder how much lost value did surfers in Laguna suffer from due to the beach closure?

Detailed information on the American Trader spill can be found in the following paper:

Chapman, D. J. and W. M. Hanneman (2001). Environmental Damages In Court: The American Trader Case. The Law and Economics of the Environment. A. Heyes: 319-367.