Sea Level Rise, Part 4: Iconic Santa Cruz surf spots could slip away with erosion

TODAY, WE HAVE PART FOUR in a seven-part series looking at sea level rise in California. From the San Diego / Tijuana Border all the way up to Humboldt Bay, we’re visiting some of the people and places that are dealing with flooding, coastal erosion, and pollution… all made worse by rising tides.

KALW’s Emergency and Disaster Preparedness reporter Wren Farrell is the lead producer on this series. Before we get into part four, here’s a quick conversation with Wren.

HANA BABA: Hi Wren. 

WREN FARRELL: Hi Hana.

HANA: Okay, part four! So far we’ve heard three different stories about flooding, what’s next?

WREN: Yeah, so I think when people think of sea level rise it’s pretty natural to think about flooding. But another issue that’s deeply related to sea level rise is coastal erosion. As beaches and cliffs and land erodes, the water moves further inland. And changing land masses means changing wave patterns.

Santa Cruz is famous for its surf breaks. Several of the region’s best surf spots are off West Cliff Drive — a three mile coastal road and pedestrian path that winds from Natural Bridges state park to the city’s famous beach boardwalk. But for the last three years, winter storms and massive waves have eroded the road and cliffs… and are changing the way people surf. Reporter Erin Malsbury explores how – in Santa Cruz – the reverence for waves runs so deep it’s helping shape local climate policy.

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REPORTER: Shaun Burns grew up surfing along West Cliff. But in the last few years, he’s noticed changes. He points some of them out on a sunny, spring day. We’re standing on the cliff above Steamer Lane, West Cliff’s most famous surf spot.

SHAUN BURNS: You can see this crack in the cliff right here. When that part of the cliff comes down, it’s gonna be a major devastation to surfing here at the ‘Lane.

REPORTER: Burns is a professional surfer and the Santa Cruz World Surfing Reserve Coordinator for the nonprofit Save the Waves. To get a better view of the change he’s talking about, we put on our wetsuits, jump off the point into the water with our boards and paddle over to one of the sea caves below the cliffs. It’s a calm day, but, as you can hear, a bit windy.

BURNS: It’s pretty out with all the clouds.

REPORTER: Some seals out there.

BURNS: Yeah, the wildlife—the true locals.

REPORTER: From out here, the crack Burns pointed out from above looks wider, and each wave sends water rushing through it. A few feet away, a big chunk of rock broke off the cliff two years ago and narrowly missed some surfers. It’s underwater now — along with smaller pieces that have fallen more recently — and these rocks alter how people surf here.

BURNS: There’s changes on how you take off out here.

REPORTER: So why would rocks change a surf spot, and what makes a good wave in the first place? It starts with storms way out in the ocean, where high winds whip up waves. Those waves travel, sometimes for thousands of miles. When a group of deep water waves, which is called a swell, reaches a coastline, it hits the shallow ocean floor and breaks into surfable waves.

The seafloor topography has a big impact on the shape of the wave. Along West Cliff, Burns says the jagged shoreline creates at least 20 different waves.

A lot of these surf spots work best during swells that come from specific directions and wrap around points that jut off from the coast. So coastal erosion could change how water moves along the coast, and in the process, change how the waves break. Plus, most spots are also only surfable at certain tides. So in the long term, sea level rise could essentially drown them. That’s why surfers have started speaking up.

BURNS: Surfers are realizing that changes are occurring frequently now and that they need to have their voice at the table when the city is working on a strategy plan.

REPORTER: Surfers have been showing up to city council meetings to weigh in on climate action plans. Although, Burns says some don’t come when the waves are good.

BURNS: So that’s kind of the hard part is just getting people there.

REPORTER: Back on the cliffs, I meet up with Gary Griggs, a coastal geologist at the University of California Santa Cruz, who lives just a short walk from the road here.

GARY GRIGGS: We’re out on West Cliff Drive, right at the end of Woodrow Avenue. And this is where damage was the greatest initially in January, early January 2023. And then it continued the next winter and the next winter. 

REPORTER: We’re standing on a $35 million dollar sea wall that the city just finished after multiple winters of bad storms. But as you can hear, construction crews are still working on other repairs.

Griggs says West Cliff is made up of a few types of rock. Hard mudstone forms the base, and a younger, weaker type of rock sits on top. On top of that is an old marine terrace.

GRIGGS: That’s what formed the old beach and the dunes and the streams. It’s really weak, really soft, so when the waves come over the top of the bluff, they erode that really quickly. 

REPORTER: That’s what’s happened the last few winters. He remembers one storm in particular from January 2023.

GRIGGS: I came out on this path, and seawater was running up the path. Once it overtopped the bluff it started eating into the fill under the sidewalk and the road.

REPORTER: During that storm, a chunk of the road fell into the water. Griggs has helped the city plan as they try to keep West Cliff from crumbling away, but climate change is making that harder.

GRIGGS: Two studies show that waves seem to be getting bigger, more energetic. Not instantly, but that’s what we’d expect from climate change. We get warmer oceans, more evaporation, more moisture, wind patterns change, and it’s wind that creates these waves.

REPORTER: Santa Cruz has already spent tens of millions of dollars constructing emergency seawalls and doing repairs, but the city knows the erosion will only get worse with climate change. To address the problem long-term, they used feedback from the community to create a 50-year vision for West Cliff, which they’ll update every decade.

It involves making the road one-way, rerouting the most vulnerable sections away from the cliff, and adding engineered elements to address erosion.

As a first step, the city council recently approved a five-year roadmap. It includes repairing retention walls and relocating part of the road. But while roads can be relocated, surf spots can’t. And the decisions the city makes could end up affecting the waves. The issue is so important in Santa Cruz that it came up at a city council meeting in March before the approval of the roadmap.

SUSIE O’HARA: Question about how we are engaging with the community, specifically around the preservation of our world-class surf breaks. 

REPORTER: That’s Santa Cruz city council member Susie O’Hara.

A few minutes later, Santa Cruz surf historian Kim Stoner warned the council about two sea caves near the iconic surf spot Steamer Lane, where Burns pointed out the cracks.

KIM STONER: Once those two caves connect, you’re going to have water coming through the Its Beach side on each wave cycle, swirling around, and it’s gonna compromise Point surf break and Slot point break. We don’t know how that’s gonna work, depending on the swell direction, but it’s gonna compromise the surf breaks.

REPORTER: If the caves connect, it could also put the iconic lighthouse on West Cliff Drive in danger. After the meeting, Stoner tells me the city recognizes that surfing is part of the essence of Santa Cruz.

STONER: They’re listening to us now. I think years ago, they thought we were just a bunch of nomads and weren’t responsible.

REPORTER: As part of the planning for West Cliff, the city asked local surfers to map out the surf spots along the coast. They also partnered with CSU Channel Islands and a coastal engineering firm to learn more about how erosion and sea level rise could change the waves. They’re hoping to find solutions that protect the coast and the surf. But first, Santa Cruz needs to figure out how to fund these projects. The city’s sustainability and climate action manager, Tiffany Wise-West, says the Trump administration has made things harder.

TIFFANY WISE-WEST: We were looking to pursue a federal grant for West Cliff Drive which ultimately they paused, because it pertained to climate resilience. So what we’re finding is that there is less federal funding available to us to pursue coastal resilience.

REPORTER: The city is conducting a study to find ways to pay for things like road relocations. In the longer-term, it’s exploring all kinds of solutions for erosion. One option is armoring the coast by stacking boulders, called rip rap, along the cliffs. Another is sea walls. But neither of these options work for the entire coastline. The city is also looking into artificial reefs, which could slow down incoming swells to reduce erosion and potentially also enhance the shape of surfable waves.

Communities around the world — from Southern California to Australia — have tried building artificial surf reefs made of rocks, concrete or sandbags with mixed success. But whether artificial reefs would actually reduce erosion or preserve the waves along West Cliff isn’t clear yet. These are all solutions for long-term problems, and Wise-West says one of the biggest challenges besides funding is getting people to come together to plan ahead instead of just focusing on quick fixes.

WISE-WEST: We’re thinking fairly far out, and sometimes it’s hard for folks to kind of conceptualize that when we’re in the here and now and we have issues here and now.

Back in the water, Shaun Burns says he wants the city and surfers to keep working together on West Cliff.

BURNS: It’s a favorite spot for everyone here in Santa Cruz and visitors, so we want to make sure we get it right.

But even still, Burns says a lot of surfers are bracing for the waves to change.

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Erin Malsbury is a freelance journalist.

This story originally appeared in KALW Public Media.