An Idea That Could Improve The Waves—And The Crowd Situation—At Malibu

The last time I surfed Malibu I ended up in urgent care. 

It was a year ago, just after the Covid ban on surfing in LA County had been lifted. An early-season south swell was rolling into First Point. Everywhere else was blown to bits. The crowd was approaching triple-digit levels when I padded out. 

Before I even caught a wave, a longboarder fell on a nose ride in front of me. His leash-less log bounced into my forehead, opening a three-inch gash. He said sorry and asked if I was OK. I tasted blood pouring down my face out of the wound and headed in. 

On the beach, three sets of people saw my battered state and said, “Hey you should go get that checked out.”

“Ya think?”

As a doctor stitched me up, I realized I wasn’t even mad at the guy who did it. I blamed myself for being out there on a shortboard. 

I’ve always felt that First Point Malibu is a longboard wave. The problem is that on most south swells, especially if it’s low tide and windy, there aren’t many spots in the area that are good except First. It’s not hard to understand why thousands of surfers in the 10 million+ LA County population flock there on every swell from April to October. 

When I moved to LA in 1996, I never surfed First. I never even looked at it. Instead, like most people with boards under 7 feet, I surfed up the point at Second and Third.

Talking with locals like Andy Lyon and visiting legends like Rabbit Bartholomew, it’s clear that the salad days for the top of the point at Malibu were in the ’70s and ’80s. But the ’90s were pretty damn good too. The closest analog I’ve experienced is La Libertad, El Salvador. On its best days, it did a solid impression of small to medium size J-Bay as well. Long, fast, peeling rights on any southerly swell. The Bud Tour had prime events at Third Point in the late ‘80s early ‘90s. In those days, the beach was wide enough up there for the judging tower, and the waves were often better than they were at the Trestles contests.

The breach point of Malibu Creek has moved around over the years but, as recently as the late ‘90s, it consistently emptied out at the top of 3rd, next to the movie star homes of Malibu Colony. The sand from the river would spread across the cobblestones and the current would push it down the point. Even at high tide, you could walk from the parking lot to the tip past pretty people lounging on soft sand the whole way. 

It doesn’t look anything like that now. 

I went to Surfrider a few weeks ago, just like a horde of other surfers did for most overhyped swell in memory. The problem is that 95% of them are currently using less than half of the spot. First Point is still doing its thing, but it’s not as long as it used to be. 2nd and 3rd are just running closeouts. On most days, they’re novelty spots at best.

The clear cause for this is erosion from Malibu Creek. On king tides, the lagoon is now breaching the ocean way down the line by the Adamson House. A hastily constructed row of rocks sit below the historical house’s fence as protection, but it’s only a matter of time before the sea washes them away. A few ancient palm trees have already collapsed. 

The beach currently consists only of only a strip of sand that’s perched on a narrowing raised berm above an expanding field of cobblestones. I can’t imagine the lifeguard stand there lasting much longer than a few more swells unless something is done. 

Coastal erosion from development and sea level rise from climate change have worked together to screw up the surf. Rabbit saw this happening on the Gold Coast of Australia in the 1990s. Kirra was at its best then, but Snapper, Rainbow Bay, and Greenmount all lacked the banks they needed to truly turn on. The shoreline was eroding, and the beaches were starved of sand.

“Kirra is tucked away, and it only used to break a handful of days,” says Rabbit. “Snapper sticks way out and would always get more swell, but there were often huge holes out there.”

Everything changed in the early 2000s when the interstate Tweed River sand bypass scheme was put in place. The build of up sediment in the river/harbor behind Duranbah had created a shipping hazard so a system was built to pump it offshore.

Rabbit refers to the Superbank that came to life a few months after the pipe got turned on a “happy accident,” much like other waves created around the world by coastal engineering projects such as Sandspit, Ala Moana, or just about any pier or jetty with a wave.  

The difference at Snapper, though, was that Rabbit and Bruce Lee were on the advisory board for the project and they effectively lobbied for the outfall of the pipe to be strategically placed at Froggy’s so that the sand could flow down the coast. 

As a result, instead of just having one world-class spot that only worked every so often, surfers now enjoyed the world’s longest stretch of barreling waves and it could be ridden almost every day. 

In the last 20 years since the sand bypass system was built in Australia, the popularity of surfing has boomed globally. The Superbank is crowded beyond belief, but it’s still easier to get a wave to yourself there than it is at Malibu, and it’s way more spread out. Rabbit’s creation is still the best human-enhanced wave in the world. Hundreds of proposals have been drawn up and some implemented for artificial reefs and wavepools in its wake, but it seems strange that no cities have taken Rabbit’s lead and run with the simple system Snapper uses. 

“I really don’t understand why more places haven’t used our model to improve their waves and expand their beaches,” Rabbit says. “The extra sand benefits everyone.”

I spoke with geologist and big wave surfer Ryan Seelbach about the viability of putting in sand pumps at other points around the world. “It really makes the most sense because you can regulate the flow and tune it back and forth,” he says. Apparently, a sand pump created wave now exists in Holland—another happy accident.

Meanwhile, Malibu just gets worse. 

Rabbit surfed 3rd Point Malibu during its prime in the 1970s. “It was just like one of our waves on the Gold Coast,” he says. 

That was when the creek emptied out at the top of the point. By the early 2000s, storm driven breaches started occurring less frequently. Hopes were high that a 2014 restoration of the lagoon would open it up and bring the waves at 2nd and 3rd back to life.

Local surfer Andy Lyons had been digging out trenches with a shovel at night for years to try to get the river water to empty at the top of the point. He even got a citation for doing it with his feet in the middle of the day. 

He was angry when he saw that the creek restoration project had no indication for where the outfall would be. The plans called for a closed in lagoon, not a rivermouth. “That fake lake they made was so stupid,” says Lyon. “Everybody knows the creek needs to be able to come out up at 3rd.”  

Surfrider Foundation CEO Chad Nelsen also says that surfers and beachgoers would have been better served if the creek was designed to breach farther to the west. He sent me a Surfrider white paper from 2011 on the subject called “West Is Best.” However, he says that the goal of the 2014 lagoon project was never to improve surf or beach dynamics. “It was a coastal wetland project to regain a habitat for wildlife, that’s it,” says Nelsen.

Since the lagoon project was finished, that “fake lake” still wants to meet the sea but it’s not doing it in the right place. The breach point has moved steadily east and now it’s threatening to take out the whole point.

Lyon blames Surfrider, which got its start in 1984 by effectively lobbying for better sewage treatment in Malibu, for not standing up for wave quality in the 2014 lagoon project. Yet both he and Nelsen agree that it’s time for something to be done about it. “We need to actively manage surf spots,” says Nelsen.

Government bureaucracy stands in the way. The State Parks manage the wetlands while LA County controls the sand. If you want to move the creek outflow, even by just a couple hundred yards, you’ve got to engage both, plus do environmental impact reports, and get approval from a host of agencies. 

Doing all of that takes time and money, and requires something that is hard to find in today’s argumentative and politically polarized world: Cooperation. “I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve been to on this topic that have turned into literal screaming matches,” says Nelsen.   

So, while everyone’s taking sides, shouting about conspiracies, retreating to echo chambers or throwing stones, nothing gets done and the problem intensifies. When the swell and tide rush in at Malibu, the county lays down sandbags and spreads out a few boulders as band-aids. This only expedites the erosion that’s taking place not just along the coast, but in our collective psyches. 

However, a single bulldozer working a few days a year could potentially move the mouth of the creek west, bring 2nd and 3rd back to life, save the Adamson House, the lifeguard tower, the famous stone wall, and maybe even protect the millionaires who built their dream houses too close to shore down the coast. The cost would be minimal and everyone would benefit. 

A sand pump, like the one at Snapper, would most likely help all of those things even more. If the Superbank is any indication, a steady flow of sediment could create new spots down current along the coast’s nooks and crannies and relieve overcrowding.

Am I dreaming to think something like that could happen?

More surfers in the water means we need to create more spots or at least make the flawed ones that we have now better, right? Millions of us surf around the world—why are our man-made spots all happy accidents? Public skateparks are everywhere. More municipal work has been done for the recreational benefit of Frisbee Golfers than surfers. Must it always be that way? Why is it so hard to unite even when we agree?

Maybe the fault, to borrow from Shakespeare, “Lies not within the stars, but in ourselves.”