In 2018, the Surfrider Foundation from San Clemente worked to create awareness of threats to the waterways with photography contests. In ‘Found Objects’, it asked contestants to pick up the colorful beachside trash, arrange it, capture it and post the photo online with some words that summarized their eco-art. The contest happened in the 2018 fall season as a clarion call against plastic pollution.
In ‘Protect and Enjoy’, the Foundation demanded video or still photographs of a location that people loved and that deserved protection. The term protect itself evoked the US Interior Department’s plan to enact a law on offshore drilling. In 2018, over six years, it planned on opening up 90% of the American coastline for the sake of the oil and gas industry. The coastline included the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic oceans as well as the Gulf of Mexico’s eastern shores. As per a 2018 estimation, tourism, commercial fishing and recreation might face losses worth billions of US dollars, besides the precious oceans getting squandered.
The Surfrider Foundation’s primary campaign was to address the so-called ‘Draft Proposed Five-Year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program’. The social media version of the campaign was against oil drilling as it described the practice as killing. It was not an exaggeration.
Destroying people’s favorite shore breaks and seashores as well as America’s marine ecosystems would account for death. The seismic explosions utilized to identify extraction locations caused the other form. The underwater noise was so loud that it would severely injure or even kill mammals such as dolphins and whales. The sight of dolphins and whale spouts swimming outside the breaker waves was and is among the best things about sitting on a beach.
This non-profit organization from San Clemente urged people to contact their elected officials to express their protest against pollution. A revision of the proposal was in the works for the 2018 fall season, alongside a statement on environmental impact. Then, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management was supposed to accept public input over 90 days. As the rough draft of the proposal was released in January 2018, over 1.6 million individuals made their responses known. There was a plan to double that response count.
For the last few months of the Trump government, human vigilance would be needed on precious locations where the sea and the land converged. Protect and Enjoy was a simple contest for people to enter and participate in. It required people to do the following.
- Post original photographs on Twitter or Instagram of locations they would like to preserve
- Tag the Foundation and the contest name
- Write blurbs about why the places mattered to them
The person in the first place of the contest got a black GoPro camera, whereas the other winners got Surfrider memberships.
If one needed more inspiration to oppose oil drilling or be a participant in the Surfrider contest, they only had to consider the so-called Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The disaster offered evidence for not drilling again. However, as per Pete Stauffer of the Surfrider Foundation, even in the best possible situation, the US’s offshore oil stock in the Pacific and Atlantic would offer just 758 days of oil.
As for Stauffer, even if everything went well with no disastrous spill, the oil drilling process would release thousands of liters of polluted water into the sea. Stauffer also stated that the drilling mud would release toxins like zinc, radioactive materials, arsenic, benzene and other contaminated substances. It urged many people to photograph their favorite spots to not only oppose the plan but also avoid the worst-case scenario of contaminated ocean water.
In the 2018 contest, people submitted visual elements of many sea plants and waves through Instagram and Twitter. There was also an option to download postcards to deliver to representatives in office. The Surfrider Foundation and several of its partners sponsored a march in DC on June 09, 2018, as they were looking to stop the regressive proposal.