The days of buzzing out to your favorite big-wave lineup in Northern California and towing into giant waves via jet ski, a.k.a. motorized personal watercraft or MPWC, could be numbered. The National Marine Sanctuary Program (NMSP), which is overseen by NOAA, has released a Draft Management Plan for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary after an extensive multi-year process. While the plan won’t be finalized until spring or summer of 2007, initial indications aren’t looking good for prospective tow-in surfers, as well as for photographers and other support crew who use the craft for filming and rescue operations.

Under the proposed Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) plan, MPWC would be limited to four small zones just outside existing harbors in Monterey, Moss Landing, Santa Cruz and Pillar Point. The four zones do not include any surfing areas.

The draft plan does contain an exception clause saying the Sanctuary "may consider" a special use permit program for tow-in surfing and tow-in surfing competitions at Maverick's "during very high surf periods," but leaves nebulous if, how and when such a program would be implemented. No other surfing areas within the Sanctuary are mentioned as exception clauses under the current proposal.

Not surprisingly, the proposed plan has many tow-in surfers fuming. "The people proposing the laws have never been in the ocean when we use the PWCs," says Jeff Clark, who pioneered surfing at Maverick’s back in the 1970s. "They've never been in the environment when the only thing abusing the coastline are 60 foot waves. Perceived or dreamed up adverse effects are not grounds for banning PWCs."

Peter Mel, who was part of a working group set up specifically to address the MPWC use issue, feels that NOAA and the MBNMS already had their minds made up going into the process. "They had been getting a lot of complaints about PWCs in the Sanctuary," he says, "so I think they already had their agenda set on how they'd like to see things take place. We worked on a lot of different things in the workshop, but because the way the whole thing was set up, consensus wasn't reached on most of the major points. So I think they just made their recommendations out of Washington D.C. and got what they wanted, yet were able to tie my name and Surfrider's name and other names to it, to kind of legitimize it."

Not all Maverick's surfer's oppose the ban

But not all surfers oppose a ban, or at least restrictions on jet ski use in Monterey Bay surf zones. Mark "Doc" Renneker of San Francisco, a longtime paddle-in surfer at Maverick's, has been vocal in his opposition to tow-in surfing. "Towing in is just a whole separate sport–it's by no means surfing as I understand it," says Renneker. "I use the analogy that it's like using a mechanical climbing machine to go up El Capitan or Everest. It's obviously not what one's doing it for. I also have a complete reverence for the natural world, and those machines just don't belong in it."

Surfrider Foundation, both the national organization and local chapters that border the MBNMS, supports the restrictions on MPWC that limit them to the four designated zones, without exception. The organization has even gone so far as to draft a formal resolution stating exactly that. The San Mateo chapter of Surfrider dedicates an entire section of its website to the issue, in what it refers to as a "campaign to protect the MBNMS," including links to studies, research and court decisions on the adverse impacts caused by MPWC on marine life (most of which are anecdotal).

Others are divided on the issue, and can empathize with both sides. "I've probably had more opportunity to tow in than anyone," says Grant Washburn, a Maverick's mainstay. "I was there before they were doing it, and I was around when the first skis started coming out. I mean, I was Jeff Clark's partner! But personally I basically felt that it made me weaker for paddling into waves."

"As a filmmaker though, the wave runners are a miracle," Washburn continues. "You can argue about it, but if you have a four-stroke and you're responsible, then I don't think it's a bad thing. It's really about the people and how they use them." Washburn does concede, however, that at smaller wave sizes, tow-in surfing should be restricted. "At 12- to 15-foot, tow-in surfing isn't cool, it's obnoxious, it's decadent. When the waves aren't giant I don't think tow surfing is justified. I mean I guess it's fun, but just because something's fun doesn't mean you should be allowed to do it in a marine reserve. So I can see both sides of it. I'm sad to see we might not be able to ride some of the biggest waves, but I also understand that realistically it can't be a free-for-all."

Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary history

The history of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is a short one. It was designated back in 1992 as a federally protected marine area, as part of the National Marine Sanctuaries Program. Congress enacted the NMSP back in the early ‘70s with the goal of "preserving or restoring marine areas for their conservation, recreational, ecological, or aesthetic values." Stretching from Marin to Cambria, the MBNMS is the largest in the Sanctuary system, covering 276 miles of coastline and 5,322 square miles of ocean. It serves as the crown jewel in the Sanctuaries Program, the Yosemite of the nation's ocean parks.

In actuality, NOAA originally intended to ban jet skis in the MBNMS back in 1992 when the Sanctuary was first designated—with the exception of the same four zones that are outlined in the current draft plan. But a limited definition of MPWC—namely their size and how many riders they can accommodate—left open a loophole that tow-in surfers and other jet ski enthusiasts have been motoring through ever since. The proposed new plan includes a more comprehensive definition for MPWC, covering the modern versions of the watercraft that are used for tow-in surfing today.

But is a ban on MPWC in most of the Sanctuary warranted? Because tow-in surfing is a relatively new sport, having only existed in earnest for about ten years, there's not much precedent for regulations, and little information on the impact of MPWC during near-shore use. There are, however, a few examples to draw from. In 2004, Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources' Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation instituted rules that require tow-in surfers and MPWC operators in large surf to first obtain a safety certificate from an accredited class. In addition, they created a rule that tow-in surfing may only be conducted during periods of high-surf advisory as declared by the National Weather Service (for north-facing Hawaiian shores that equates to 25-foot surf or bigger).

In Cape Town, South Africa, Table Mountain National Park limits tow-in surfing within its corresponding Marine Protected Area to just two big-wave spots: Dungeons and Sunset Reef, and only if swell size is five meters or more. In addition, a strict permitting process greatly limits the total number of approved tow-in surfers at any one time, and requires extensive safety training for prospective MPWC users. But the Cape Town program has been controversial, and reportedly has many South African big-wave surfers upset over the extent of the regulations.