CAUGHT INSIDE # 129

Caught inside indeed. One look at this photo, the contents caught inside the stomach of our local sea turtles, and Surftime realizes that our work is not done. Not by a long shot. Sure, our magazine is here to cheer things up, to promote Indonesian surfing, to expound on the paradise that is our surfing lives here in Indonesia. But we also must never shirk our responsibility to remind one and all that paradise comes at a price. A price that we are not paying. We are stealing from the ocean.

We realize how tiresome it is to be scolded about the environment and what we must do to keep it healthy. We realize this. But just look at this photo again. Take a good long look. Would you want that in your stomach? In your children’s stomachs? We surfers take so much pleasure from the ocean yet we do so little to protect it. And we, us surfers, are the front line. And yet we are so useless, letting the enemy pass through our ranks without a fight. But remember, the whole concept of us saving the world is a false one. The world does not need our help. It just needs us to get gone. Think about it.

Our world has survived ice ages, catastrophic events, giant meteor strikes, die offs…and yet it survives through the millennia. Just on a different time scale. The Amazon forest being destroyed? What’s that to the earth? As soon as we are gone, it will rebuild and regrow, but all in its own time. And that is the point here. What about our time? When we pollute we are not destroying the earth, we are destroying our ourselves. Our time. So take a good look at what is happening to just a single species of the sea. The way things are going, you’re not far behind. The question is, as usual, what the hell are you going to do about it?

Here’s a start: https://sungai.watch/pages/about-us

Do something. Do something now.

-Matt George, Editor-in-Chief