Bolsa Beach Observation Paper

OBSERVATIONS:

Wednesday 28th, 2015

7:22 AM-9:30 AM

Accompanied by boyfriend

We arrive to Bolsa Chica Beach at 7:19 AM and find a parking spot after three minutes. When we first exit the car, I can see a man zipping up his wetsuit across from us. He has brown hair, brown eyes, and appears to be Asian and in his 30’s. From this point forward, I will be referring to this surfer as Mr. A. His trunk is open and has his surfboard in it which appears to be a hybrid surfboard. He closes his trunk and walks towards the beach. We follow behind, keeping a respectable distance. I look around and see that there are several surfers at this time. There appears to be about 80 surfers within my immediate vantage point. While there is a large numbers of

There are significantly less surfers; I can only see 20 from my vantage point. I return to the spot on the beach where I had observed the surfers this morning. There were no longer any non-surfers on the beach, excluding us. Observe the 20 surfers in the ocean and find that they seem to be in a in an informal group of 4 to 7 people. The clusters are around 20 to 30ft away from one another. These surfers within the cluster stay around 10 to 15ft away from one another, but all of them seem to stay close to an invisible line about 50 ft away from the shoreline. There was four surfers in a line up waiting for a wave. I observed them for awhile as they looked out into the ocean. One wave began forming and I saw that two of them started paddling towards it. The one closest to the break of the wave stood up first. This was a girl, henceforth noted as Ms. T, and she began riding the wave. The second person who had paddle to the wave, also began to stand on their board, they were closer to the end of the wave, and surfed out of it quickly. Ms. T followed suit and surfed to the end of

He doesn’t do as well as the first two surfers and loses his balance and falls into the wave. After resurfacing from the ocean using the board as a floatation device, he paddles his way back to his original spot in the ocean. Neither Ms. T. or any other surfer makes any communication with the surfer who had failed, nor do they communicate with each other. Ms. T. and her companion return to their spot and wait for the next wave. Ms. T. wears a full body swimsuit, and when she surfs it has a focus on techniques and maneuvers. Her companion appears to have less skill than her, as he only surfs in a straightforward manner from one end of the wave to another. Instead of waiting for the wave to collapse, Ms. T. dives through the wave as it is about to expire to speed up her return to her original location. Her companion does not attempt this maneuver. Ms. T. and her companion do not appear to communicate at any time during their surfing