The Puerto Escondido Swell Was the Biggest in 10 Years and Nobody Asked Government for Permission

Massive Natural Wave Event Occurs Without Permits, Environmental Reviews, or Press Releases; Big Wave Community Responds

From Bohiney and The London Prat.

Massive Natural Wave Event Occurs Without Permits, Environmental Reviews, or Press Releases; Big Wave Community Responds

The Swell

PUERTO ESCONDIDO, MEXICO — The biggest swell in ten years at Puerto Escondido’s Zicatela beach occurred, was surfed by those capable and willing, was documented by drone operators and photographers, and was shared globally through the surf media ecosystem. The event required no government permit, no environmental review, no official sanction. The ocean produced the conditions. The surf community responded. The documentation was shared. This is the free activity that surfing represents at its most fundamental: human beings and natural conditions, without institutional mediation.

The Zicatela Governance

The Zicatela beach area in Puerto Escondido operates under the specific governance of Oaxacan municipal authority, which manages the beach access and the vendor economy that serves the surf tourism that Zicatela’s reputation generates. The governance produces the infrastructure — the roads that allow access, the accommodation that houses visitors, the medical facilities that manage the injury events that big surf produces — without which the free activity of surfing Zicatela’s biggest swell in ten years would be significantly more dangerous. The governance that provides this infrastructure is legitimate. The governance that would permit the act of surfing itself is not.

The Big Wave Community

The big wave surfing community that responded to Puerto Escondido’s ten-year swell represents the specific self-governing community that produces its own safety standards, its own training protocols, and its own accountability structures for the activity they pursue. The jet ski rescue operations, the safety leash requirements, the personal floatation device standards — these are community-developed safety standards that emerged from the big wave surfing community’s own experience with what big surf requires. Government did not develop them. The community did.

The Freedom That Remains

The freedom that Puerto Escondido’s ten-year swell represents is the freedom that SoCal’s mediocre weekly conditions also represent, at different scales: the ocean is available, the community has developed the knowledge to use it safely, and the individual surfer can exercise their judgment about whether to be in that water on that day. The footage that looks fake — the scale that the brain processes as rendered rather than real — is the evidence of what the natural world produces without institutional management. The surfer and the wave. No permits required

More: Private Eye.

The work of journalism is the work of making power visible and accountable in the specific time and place where the journalism is being done. Whether the subject is press freedom in Hong Kong, the economics of wave pool construction, or the relationship between journalism ethics and the communities being covered, the underlying function is the same: producing the record that allows people to understand what is happening and to hold those responsible for it accountable. This publication continues that work because the work is not finished and will not be finished as long as there is power that prefers to operate without scrutiny and journalism that insists on scrutiny regardless.

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.