How many surf sessions?

Earlier I posted on how many surfers there are in the US. This is a follow up about how often they surf. The same 2001 marine recreational survey used in that previous post also estimated how many visits to the beach surfers made in a year.

As the graphic above illustrates, there were a total of about 76.5 million surf visits in the US in 2000.

This means that surfers averaged about 22 surf sessions per year.

The top states for annual surf sessions were Hawaii, California, Florida, and North Carolina. The number of days of participation (visits) for the top five states could not be estimated because there was an insufficient sample size per state after the top 4.

At Trestles (a top quality wave with a avid local surf population), survey respondents reported an average annual visitation of 109 visits/year.

A study on surfer illness in Oregon found that surfers averaged 77 surf visits per year.

If I had to guess, I would say that you'd find that the average number of annual surf sessions is bimodal - there is a large number of surfers who average 5-15 days per year and then there are more avid groups along the coasts that average closer to 70-150 visits a year. More information on the behavior of surfers is needed to figure this out. Hopefully, the Surf First surfer survey will help us start to answer this question and others.

Study: Surfers ingest 10 times more water than swimmers, divers

A new study has found that surfers may unintentionally ingest 10 times more water than swimmers or divers, putting them at higher risk of contracting gastrointestinal illnesses when surfing in contaminated waters.

The study, which may be the first of its kind, was conducted by scientists at Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. It also suggests that because water quality at Oregon beaches is significantly better than more popular surfing destinations, such as California, Hawaii, or Florida, the risk of GI illness is lower for people surfing the frigid waters of the Oregon coast.

“While the risk for Oregon surfers is not high for GI illness, our findings suggest that surfers who spend longer periods of time in recreational waters, or who surf in more contaminated locations, are likely to be at higher risk of contracting GI illnesses,” said David Stone, an assistant professor in the OSU Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology.

The study, funded by Oregon Sea Grant, used a Web-based survey to collect voluntary responses from 520 of the estimated 12,000 surfers in Oregon. Participants estimated the amount of water they ingest during a typical recreational day, and the researchers used historic water quality data collected at six popular surfing beaches to calculate the risk of infection from fecal bacteria using enterococci as an indicator organism.

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