Surf conservation in practice: data, governance, and climate-ready breaks

International Coastal Management (ICM) joined the World Surfing Conservation Conference 2026 (WSCC) to share practical learnings and hear what’s working (and what’s not) in surf conservation, coastal governance, and practical delivery. Across sessions from diverse stakeholders of councils, researchers, coastal engineers and surfers, the message was consistent: if you want to protect surf breaks long-term, you need governance that treats surfing as an asset, plus the data and assessment tools to guide decisions.

Why pilots work (and why we keep using them)

At WSCC, Aaron Salyer (ICM) presented on the history of pilot projects on the Gold Coast, and how the lessons from those pilots can be translated to other coastlines, including Oceanside.

The core message - a pilot approach is often the best way to move from concept to program, particularly when outcomes include community value like surf amenity.

Pilots can:

• prove performance in real conditions

• generate monitoring evidence that decision-makers trust

• refine design and operations before scaling

• support approvals and funding by reducing uncertainty

• build shared engagement and story with communities and partners

For ICM, this isn’t theoretical. The Gold Coast has shown how monitoring-led delivery and staged implementation can turn complex coastal challenges into long-term, fundable programs. ICM pioneered inclusion of surfing in designing coastal management strategies with the northern gold coast beach protection strategy in the 1990s.

Those same principles are directly relevant when translating ideas to new settings like Oceanside, where context differs but the need for measurable outcomes, stakeholder confidence, and adaptive delivery remains the same.

Surf amenity as a service: City of Gold Coast’s monitoring approach

City of Gold Coast presented work on a Surf Amenity Monitoring project, developed with partners including Griffith University and Surfline. The focus is clear: if we want to protect or improve surf outcomes, we need a way to measure surf amenity over time, and to use that data in planning and operations.

What stood out

A clear “monitoring to decisions” pathway. The “next steps” slide set out how monitoring is intended to be used, including:

• building surf amenity assessment capability

• embedding surf monitoring data into infrastructure planning

• using surf data to better understand our surfing breaks

• supporting stakeholder engagement using shared surf datasets

• informing and reviewing coastal management actions

This is important because it positions surf amenity as something that can be planned for, tracked, and improved, rather than treated as an unmeasurable side effect.

Why surf breaks are a governance issue, not just a recreation issue

Another City of Gold Coast presentation focused on surf governance, including a Surf Management Plan framework and how policy, programs, and partnerships can align around surf breaks. The presentation highlighted the scale of surfing as an economic driver on the Gold Coast, including:

• surfing contributing about $542 million per year to the local economy

• around 2.5 million surfers across the Gold Coast World Surfing Reserve area in 2025

• high-use breaks with reported annual surfer numbers including:

  • Burleigh Heads: 265,288

  • Currumbin Alley: 691,264

  • Kirra Point: 121,906

  • Snapper Rocks / Rainbow Bay: 939,268

Surfing is recognised as part of the city’s culture and “way of life”, alongside its broader environmental value and global profile.  This framing matters because it changes the decision lens. When surfing is treated as public infrastructure (in the broad sense), it becomes something councils can plan for, monitor, report on, and improve over time.

Climate change and surf breaks: a practical vulnerability rating tool

The City of Gold Coast also presented an approach to assess surf break vulnerability to climate change, using a scoring method designed to work across current and projected conditions. The slides referenced the Surf Break Vulnerability - Climate Change Assessment Tool (“SurfCAT”) (Sadrpour & Reineman, 2023), built around five principal factors.

The five assessment factors

The method assigns each factor a vulnerability level, converts that to a numeric score, then combines the scores into an overall vulnerability rating.

Principal factors and what they ask:

1. Tidal sensitivity

   1. How sensitive are the waves to tidal changes in relation to bathymetric features?

2. Seafloor composition

   1. Is wave quality reliant on sediment transport patterns?

3. Shoreline resilience

   1. Are there space, time, and sediment supply/processes to enable shoreline migration?

4. Swell sensitivity

   1. Is the surf spot sensitive to swell direction (for example, a narrow swell corridor)?

5. Resilience planning activities

   1. Has surfing been formally included in adaptation planning?

Why this matters

For councils and delivery partners, these kinds of tools help move from “we care about surf breaks” to “we can compare options and quantify trade-offs.” That is especially useful when planning nourishment, bypassing, reefs, coastal structures, or shoreline adaptation where surf outcomes can be improved or unintentionally impacted.

Stormwater and marine litter: GPT performance is a major lever

A presentation by Optimal Stormwater focused on litter and stormwater, including the role of Gross Pollutant Traps (GPTs). The framing was strong: litter is a “gateway pollutant,” and GPTs are one of the most direct controls available in the urban catchment-to-coast pathway.

Key stats presented

• ~130,000 tonnes of plastic leaks into Australia’s marine environment each year

• Around 91,300 GPTs installed across Australia over a nine-year period

• Only ~5% of GPTs functioning optimally

• About 40% not functioning at all

• A claim that maintaining existing GPTs could stop ~100,000 tonnes of litter entering waterways annually

Because surf breaks are downstream. If we are serious about surf values, water quality and catchment maintenance programs need to be part of the same conversation as coastal works.

Key learnings for surf conservation

Across all the presentations, WSCC reinforced a practical direction for surf-focused coastal projects:

• Measure what matters: surf amenity, shoreline response, and water quality need data, not just intent

• Plan for trade-offs: use structured assessment methods so surf outcomes sit alongside risk, cost, ecology, and constructability

• Design with operations in mind: long-running systems work because governance, monitoring, and improvement are funded and managed

• Use pilots to de-risk decisions: pilots can convert uncertainty into evidence and enable scaling

ICM works across coastal adaptation planning, nourishment and sediment systems, reefs and nearshore structures, and monitoring-led delivery. WSCC was a useful checkpoint: the sector is moving toward clearer measurement, stronger governance, and evidence-led pathways to protect surf breaks while meeting broader coastal resilience needs.

If you’d like to talk through how a pilot pathway, monitoring program, or surf-sensitive option assessment could support a current project, get in touch.