I read about this on Surfline – now I’m spreading the word and urge you to share this with your community of surfers.

With lessons learned from the recent fight to save Trestles, the folks at Surf-First.org have put together a survey designed to gather demographics on surfers in the US. Because they say it better than I can, here’s copy from the survey landing page:

All across the country, surfers are facing access and environmental fights that fail to consider their needs and enormous impact. While fishermen and other recreational ocean users flex big muscle in courthouses and town halls, surfers get pushed aside a ‘segment group.’ A minor hobby for punk kids – instead of healthy lifestyle for whole families. That’s because we let them.

Despite being a 1000-year-old sport with a $7 billion industry, surfing has failed to produce the demographic and economic studies to show who we are, where we live, and what we spend. So while other interest groups bolster their arguments with impressive numbers to prove their positions, all-too often, surfers get blindsided and bowled over, unable to offer a single hard number to support their cases or save their breaks.

Not anymore. With your help, we can start to paint a true picture of who surfers are and how we behave. And every surfer who answers provides another stroke of necessary detail. All you need to do is take 15 minutes to fill out the survey.