Cliff Kapono Has A Plan
Images provided by Cliff Kapono.
I walked outside yesterday and it was ninety degrees Fahrenheit. In Los Angeles, in October.
It’s a bit of an overused phrase these days, but the vibe is severely off. Terms like “heat-dome” shouldn’t become a part of the regular, vernacular rotation. Summer ended on the desktop calendar more than a page back ago, and the consistently oppressive, open-the-oven heat in fall is just straight up bad. And that’s just one problem alongside everything else, like the collapse of the creative industry, the news, and all those other things that are having you consider that living on that remote farm in the middle of nowhere is actually a pretty good idea after all.
It all feels a little helpless and a recipe for falling to your knees and crying out for someone to do something, anything about it. Thankfully, if you do that, there are incredibly solid, sound people like Dr Cliff Kapono who would tell you to stop the dramatics. Because there is actually something you can do.
Most readers, watchers, and followers of our shared surf obsession are familiar with Cliff already. Beyond lovely, as comfortable surfing Jaws as he is wearing a lab coat, gets to claim the given “World’s Smartest Surfer” title, and all that good stuff. But did you know he’s also been running a research lab that’s all about education, information, preservation, and promoting actual human environmental interaction? Because I didn’t. At least not until I saw a recent VICE piece highlighting Cliff’s work efforts that left me with a feeling of, well, hope? And the crazy idea that maybe we can actually maybe sort this thing out, and get everyone else on board too. Here’s what he has to say about it.
Dr Kapono, how are we? Whereabouts are you, over on the Big Island?
I’m in Hilo, just outside of our little lab zone where we got our computers running and everything.
Oh, nice, so that’s where the MEGA Lab is all set up then?
Yeah, we got a little team, a full team, team vibes. We’ve got people that are, you know, crunching numbers that we keep underground and feed some food once in a while (laughs). They help us.
But, yeah, it’s a fun operation. It’s not just me here. But, you know, just checking in today. Make sure while the cat’s away the mice don’t play, as they say. Check in with everyone, and if they have any questions, I can just do my best. It kind of sucks that I don’t get too much time on the ground now to do the work. But, you know, it is what it is.
Yeah, the crossover section on the Venn diagram of what's productive and what's exciting when it comes to work and surfing usually isn’t too big. Just finished your VICE Let It Kill You short though, great watch!
Oh, thank you, brah. I didn’t come up with that title. I was like, “Does this really have to be the title?” But they were trying to clickbait it. It's rad that they're covering everything. It's really cool, it’s a good series.
Anyway, speaking of that clickbait, I’m genuinely wondering if you ever get over the whole “Smartest Surfer In The World” title that gets tossed your way? Do you just shrug your shoulders and go like, oh, yeah. Or, is it sort of, like, guys, come on.
I feel like I’ve always been an advocate for how many intellectual surfers there are, and how I’m just a member of the community. Being labelled as a representative of the top? I’m definitely not comfortable with that. It’s not the title I chose. But because it wasn’t getting the, I don’t know, maybe the views that it needed, it had to get changed.
And you see that with how people utilise the internet now. It’s always the most dangerous session of your life, or how you almost died and other sensationalised titles, and I hope people can appreciate that reality of the social space.
But when it comes to it, I definitely don’t think I’m the smartest surfer in the world. Especially when I think of the other communities of surfers I’ve been lucky to be a part of in San Diego at Scripps and even up at UC Santa Cruz and in Rhode Island and New York, Florida, New Zealand, and Australia.
You know, in Australia, the collegiate system of Australia really supports academic works that better understand the mechanics and the dynamics of waves and wave riding more so than any other nation. I would think, per capita, it produces more literary work and scholarly work and peer-reviewed work about surfing and surfers. So, Australia’s sort of in the front of my mind when it comes to academics and evidence-based research for talking about surfing.
And then you have people who, currently, I look up to, like Easkey Britton. She has her PhD and is working in Ireland, understanding how marginalised communities use surfing to improve their lifestyles and wellbeing.
So, the smartest surfer ever? I don’t think so. But, a part of the community that wants to elevate their athletic proficiency alongside their intellectual merit? That’s cool, in my mind.
It’s extremely cool to hear that. It’s sort of like a new-age movement to that theme you always read about in old Surfer’s Journals, where the earlier generations were almost beat poets and, in some cases, just these beautiful writers because they wanted to better understand the world they were exploring. It’s cool to see that curious mindset hasn’t died out, and it’s not all just clips and quick hits and instant gratification.
Yeah, and hopefully evolving. People recognise that it’s okay to be a pro surfer and, you know, when you’re fortunate enough to focus more of your energy into moments of surfing, realise that the ocean isn’t always at that level. Outside of competition, where it’s very structured, the free surf world or the travelling world, it’s dependent on conditions. There’s a lot of waiting around.
You really are privileged with a lot of extra time, even more so than a competitive surfer who has to train or learn the dynamics of a particular spot. You’re developing your ability. But you only want to or can display it at a certain moment. So, you’re waiting around.
And when people are waiting around, that’s when they pick up art, or make music, or start shaping their own boards. In my mind, the science that I do during my quote-unquote downtime is my art. It’s something that helps me pass the time in a way that is purposeful and interesting. I’ve learned, over the year, by dedicating more time to things like science as an art, it’s improved my surfing. And my surfing has improved how I look at the world and ask better questions. They’re so complementary to each other, and they really elevate the final product and just that feeling of being connected to nature.
Tell me a little bit more about the MEGA Lab. Did it all come about right after you graduated, and you moved back to Hilo?
It kind of started between me and my friend, John Burns, who's also in the video. He’s a surfer, and he’s a big skate head, and we talked about it when we were undergraduates together. We were just looking for ways to afford to surf and have fun, and science became this non-competitive space where we could afford to do all that.
The more we invested our time in science, the more we saw within the academic culture, for one. And two, if we ever got to the right position, we would try to change it to the way we wanted to be a part of it. So, we thought we’d just make this lab where we’d get barreled, have fun, and learn about nature, and it’s not going to have this pressure of trying to win Nobel Prizes or cure diseases. We’re just doing it because it’s fun.
Both those other things are very important, like world titles and competitive surfing, to some people. For us, though, it wasn’t what we wanted to dedicate a majority of our life doing. What we wanted to dedicate our lives to was time in the ocean, and the MEGA Lab manifested itself out of that brief that we could one day create something together that supported science and the ability for people to be in nature. Particularly in the ocean. The MEGA Lab broke the stereotypical call for what science could look or feel like, and we held true to that.
But it wasn’t until 2023 that we actually made it a non-profit entity with a mission to develop technology to protect the ocean and give it to communities that need it the most. Since having that, we’ve had people supporting the mission collective. We now have sponsorships like Reef Footwear, Visual, Hydroflask, and support from different institutions like the University of Hawaii and Arizona State University and other, different non-profits like Surfrider and Save The Waves Coalition.
We’re, like, hey, we’re putting our flag down here, and if you don’t feel like a regular scientist, come to the MEGA Lab, where we’re trying to do things differently. And we believe creativity is one of the strongest tools we can implement to be in nature more and just be a good, you know, renter? We’re only in this world for a moment, and we’re taking a lot. So, how can we be good tenants.
It’s a mission that’s successful by creating more understanding, it sounds like.
Yeah, we're hoping our Map to Adapt dot com initiative is just this repository where people can access these reads and see what's going on. I think having that as a database, as a tool, that people can build upon is going to be our goal.
If policymakers use it. If community members use it. If surf companies use it, whatever. We want people to know what a reef looks like and have some sort of ownership with that reef in their mind, and develop a relationship and rapport with that reef? That’s the goal.
Having a million of those reefs up there for the world to see, we think, will be used in ways we don’t even know yet. I think just having it up there is super important for the next generation of problem solvers. It's almost like, just, getting it into the hands of people, into their minds, it’s going to unlock things that we can't even imagine what they’re going to be used for. And it's hard to sell that idea.
Because people want promises, they want to hear that if we get a million reefs mapped, we’re going to save the planet. But that’s not what MEGA Lab is about. We’re not promising anything.
The only thing we can promise is that we’re going to get you out in nature, and that’s the goal. We want people to be out in nature, and that is probably the most important thing that we need more than ever. Protection and the stewardship of environmental spaces is being out there, and that's what we're trying to do.
Surfing is this vehicle to get people interested in science. In my work, I’d like these maps, or the act of mapping, to reach around the world and get more people on the reef, and understand what their role is out of the ocean.
On that note, has there been anything from either your recent, semi-recent or not-so-semi-recent research or findings that you feel like more people should be like talking about?
Yeah, there are brilliant reefs in places you’d never expect. Outside of reefs and outside of harbours and in murky waters. There are reefs now being discovered in rivers! Just the surf break I grew up surfing, the water gets brown often, and I never thought there’d be this great reef there, and even after mapping, really just a couple years ago, I saw it was one of the most bio-diverse reefs in town!
I was tripping on it. I don’t have to go to the Great Barrier Reef to see a healthy coral ecosystem. I can just literally put some goggles on and look underneath the surf break I surf every day.
It’s probably, definitely, a hack-y question, but: what can we be doing? How can we be doing a better job of keeping the community going?
Of course, people want to hear, like, don't buy single-use plastic and use reusable cups and things like that. Those are all super important and joint beach cleanups, but I would say the first thing is to get out into nature. Make sure you make these observations and write them down, and share them with people.
And next is to, you know, get involved with communities that want to protect those resources. There are always people in your community who have similar values across all political ideologies, all religions, and all different perspectives of life. There’s always going to be a shared value, and I’m super confident that they care about the resources in that community.
If that community is built around surfing, waves, and reef, you’re going to make an impact by sharing what you learn. You don’t even need a reef! You can have a beach, sand, water, whatever. Finding those resources isn’t too demanding, and communicating that to your community is powerful.