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The Tone-Deaf Excitement for Hurricane Season
With Fiona wreaking havoc on Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, aid is being sent and resources are being posted to help those affected. While there has been an increase in community aid and awareness amongst our world within the last few years, there is still a strange, tone-deaf excitement from the surf community during hurricane season on the Atlantic.
Hurricane season for the Atlantic region is June 1st through November 30th, leaving plenty of time for a monster or two to bring about trauma and disaster. Oddly enough, this is simultaneously when some of the good swells happen in Puerto Rico and when the east coast of the United States wants to escape the cold. The winter swells in PR have gained so much popularity the island has been deemed as the ‘North Shore’ of the Atlantic region. Hearing this, it can be fairly obvious to see that intermediate and advanced surfers are the ones inhabiting the waves off of PR’s coastlines.
Hurricanes consistently have hit the Caribbean and avoided the United States, created swells that produce waves bigger than usual. Low pressure systems with storm surges and high speed winds the sets can be exciting for the shores they hit, creating a good day to paddle out.
Seeing the story posts of wave forecasts with quotes like, “Let’s f*cking go!” “Absolutely firing, who wants to meet up?”, you can’t help but feel a sense of cognitive dissonance with the reports: people clinging to cement beams in floods, casualty reports, and the 2 feet of rainfall that the Caribbean is experiencing. Hurricane Fiona was Puerto Rico’s first major hurricane since 2017, and it was only a category 1 when it reached landfall on Punta Tocon. The flooding and widepsread power outages had affected 1.5 million. Puerto Rico was still in the process of rebuilding after Hurricane Maria in 2017.
How can (some) surfers sit back and post about the swell coming to their shore, and not the trauma and disaster wrecking an island in which they frequent? There has to be some sort of reformative discord within the surfing community, especially on the east coast. This concourse can be seen with most tourism, especially surf tourism: a country is visited and sold for its resource (waves), with little-to-no return on investment with regards to sustainability and aid. Surfers like Jon Rose and Dylan Graves have provided aid to their community in Puerto Rico. While they may have the financial support to provide to others, there are little steps that can be taken to provide support and aid to Puerto Rico.
Some resources to check out and distribute(if you can’t read Spanish, use Google Translate. This isn’t a Spanish final, people need help):
We need to be better and do better; honor the areas we visit for our recreation and experience. There won’t be a place to visit for waves if there’s no foundation, no incredible locals, no community to support and aid in the times they need it the most.
