The NW Ground Swell Is Arriving Without Government Assistance; Government Had Nothing to Do With It

The 305-Degree Swell From Kamchatka Was Produced by the Ocean; NOAA Measured It; Surfers Are Going Surfing

From Bohiney and The London Prat.

The 305-Degree Swell From Kamchatka Was Produced by the Ocean; NOAA Measured It; Surfers Are Going Surfing

The Swell

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA — A moderately sized NW ground swell from a Kamchatka storm system is arriving at Southern California’s west-facing breaks with 16-17 second periods and 30-foot source seas. The swell was produced by the Pacific Ocean’s atmospheric dynamics. It was measured by NOAA’s buoy network, which is a legitimate government function: producing and distributing ocean condition data that the private surf forecast market uses to generate the predictions that surfers rely on. The swell itself is government-free. The measurement is a legitimate public good. The surfing decision is an individual right.

The Information Chain

The information chain that connects the Kamchatka storm to the Tuesday morning lineup at Rincon runs through: NOAA’s deep-water buoy data, the private surf forecast companies that interpret the data (WaveCast, Surfline, Magicseaweed), the surf community’s collective knowledge of how specific swell angles interact with specific break geometries, and the individual surfer’s decision about whether Tuesday morning justifies the alarm clock adjustment. Each link in this chain is either legitimate public provision of information or private market production of analysis. None of it requires government management of the actual surfing.

The Government Intervention Points

The government intervention points in surf access — the beach closures for shark activity, the permit requirements for event-related surfing, the coastal zone management that determines who can build what near surf breaks — are the points where the libertarian analysis applies most directly. The ocean is free. The information about the ocean is either free (NOAA data) or market-produced (private forecasts). The intervention that restricts access to the free ocean for reasons beyond protecting third-party rights is the intervention that requires justification.

The Freedom That Exists

The freedom that exists in SoCal surfing in May 2026: paddle out to any public beach without a permit, choose your break based on the freely available forecast data, exercise your individual risk assessment about the conditions, and surf without asking anyone’s permission for any of this. This is the baseline freedom that the libertarian analysis should acknowledge and defend: most of the time, most of the ocean, most of the surfing is free from government management. The exceptions are worth scrutinizing precisely because they are exceptions to a baseline of access that is real and valuable

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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished. The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished. The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished. The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished.