Tourists flock to Laguna Beach for its charming neighborhoods, vibrant art scene, sweeping canyons, and picturesque coastline. And the city’s residents have a long history of conservation efforts to show they don’t take any of it for granted, either.
On October 22, Visit Laguna Beach welcomed guests to an evening at the Rivian South Coast Theater celebrating Laguna Beach’s progress toward becoming the most ocean-friendly city in the nation. Its legacy of environmental stewardship continues as many of its businesses—seven hotels, 64 restaurants, and counting—join Surfrider’s Ocean Friendly Programs, minimizing plastic pollution and implementing environmentally friendly practices.
The evening featured a screening of Dana Frankoff’s film “Voice Above Water,” which tells the story of Wayan Nyo, a 90-year-old fisherman living in Indonesia who has dedicated himself to fishing out plastic from the ocean. Some of the film’s opening scenes show colorful fish swimming beneath the ocean’s surface, their scales reflecting the sunlight so that they seem to glow. This is contrasted by later shots of floating trash where fish once were, the water so polluted that light can hardly pierce through it. The film acts as a sobering reminder of the magnitude of the pollution problem as well as a call to action, so that we might come together to solve it. “I will stop worrying about the ocean once I die,” Nyo says in the final moments of the film. “If I clean here and people elsewhere don’t do the same, it will be useless.”
As the CEO of the Surfrider Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting the world’s ocean and beaches, Chad Nelson shares Nyo’s concerns about the sheer quantity of trash that is carelessly tossed into the sea each year. “This is the solution,” he said about partnering with businesses during the evening’s panel discussion, “We’ll never beach clean our way out of this problem. We need to stop all the (pollution) at the source.”
So it is worth celebrating when businesses, like the Ocean Friendly certified hotels and restaurants in Laguna Beach, commit themselves to sustainability. “The biggest misconception is that being ocean-friendly is more expensive,” Nelson said. He went on to share statistics evidencing that businesses often save money after ditching single-use plastic products.
Even with the dire state of our oceans looming, there was an air of hope and vitality to the evening. The panel—made up of Frankoff, Nelson, Laguna Beach City Councilmember Hallie Jones, and Marine Program Director for the Marisla Foundation Sara Lowell—as well as moderator Kurt Bjorkman, Chief Operating Officer of The Ranch Laguna Beach, spoke realistically about the present while remaining optimistic about the future, both locally and internationally. Everyone in attendance was invigorated by the progress that Laguna Beach has made toward the protection of its coastline, and it was impossible not to feel a little lighter by the end of the evening.
“This is a commitment to protecting our natural treasure,” said Joanna Bear, CEO of Visit Laguna Beach, “The success of this panel demonstrates a unique opportunity for our community and business leaders to align on a shared vision: establishing Laguna Beach as the global benchmark for ocean stewardship.”
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