Gerry Lopez: Keep Your Surf Spot Quiet!

Free and welcome as Mr. Pipeline is with (and on behalf of) the surfing community at large, he admits his transgressions in exposing spots, and professes lessons learned therein. Primarily: Keep your mouth shut.

“I ruined Bali,” he told me from his house in Bend, Oregon. “When I went to Bali, I came back and opened my big mouth and told all my friends who told all their friends, ha! Now look at it! Can you imagine what Bali was like 40 years ago, man?”

Now, Gerry Lopez may not have been the first surfer to fix his gaze upon Uluwatu, but he was among those who forged the initial rush and, by and large, probably had it to himself.

“Nope,” I flatly responded, having been there a couple of times and having been put off by the crowds enough to know what he meant.

Factor in cheap (if slightly uncomfortable) international travel and modern swell-forecasting implements, and, well, hitting a bullseye on a strike mission doesn’t lend itself to the same self-satisfied elation it once did. Not that anyone’s complaining about predictably being able to land themselves in near-immaculate conditions on the other side of the world with enough notice to put in for PTO with the boss person. To describe this as anything short of a feat is to miss the miracles and marvels of the times.

Side effects abound everywhere if you look hard enough. But who can we blame? The late Sean Collins and Surfline? The Wright Brothers for gracing humanity with the gift of flight? Go as far back as you like and there’s surely someone to point a finger at, but why?

Sure, Surfline was perhaps the beginning of a widely-informed surfing public. And the airplane led to scouting (accidental or otherwise) that unveiled mysto waves like Fiji’s Cloudbreak–another wave perhaps “ruined” in the 1970s, and this esteemed publication was part and parcel of that fateful offense against secrecy.

Gerry spotted Cloudbreak from the great blue yonder early on, and got wondering, but never pursued it on his own. “We went down to Australia in 1970 for a world contest and I distinctly remember they stopped in Nadi, in Fiji, to refuel. When they took off, they flew right over Cloudbreak and I remember looking and seeing that wave. It must have been a good swell because I can remember just seeing that whitewater line just peeling down the reef. Years later when Dave Clark Started the camp [at Tavarua], I told him about that and he goes ‘Yeah, I saw the same thing and that’s why I’m here.’”

But lest we view this as gatekeeping, consider it a mere protection of the labor(s) of love you’ve undergone to learn when and where you’d like to surf. Gerry’s not suggesting we bar people from surfing–no, in that respect he welcomes newcomers with yogic arms wide open. And on a smaller, local, perhaps more humble plane, consider the new sandbar the last storm left you at your home expanse of beach breaks. Zip your lips and you are one of perhaps few who get to lap it up, however ephemeral it may be.

Figuring Gerry knows–and has likely surfed–every wave I’ve ever encountered, I begin to describe a far-flung wave I recently started frequenting, mostly alone, and he stops me dead in my tracks. “Don’t tell me, man.”

Roger that, loud and clear, Mr. Lopez. Consider my pie hole padlocked.