- I talk about our environmental crisis
and then people say, "Well, what can I do?"
Well for surfers, I got something for them to do.
Here, ride a SmartFin.
You're making a big contribution.
Thank you.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Temperatures on Earth are rising
and that's causing arctic sea ice to melt
which leads to higher sea levels
and disappearing coastlines.
Scientists are tracking this in part
by monitoring ocean temperature.
They say how fast all this happens
will likely determine the future of our planet.
And that's where SmartFin comes in.
(ocean water moving)
- I'm a surfer dude.
No, I'm not a surfer.
I took three lessons and swallowed a gallon of water
and was sick for a day.
- [Narrator] This is Andy Stern.
Andy is not a surfer, an engineer, an oceanographer,
or a climate scientist.
- When I started this work I knew nothing.
- [Narrator] He's actually a neurologist.
And he's the brains behind the high-tech surfboard fin
that records ocean data to track and study climate change.
- Well, that's a cool idea.
That's really really cool.
- [Narrator] And Andy brought all these people together
to help make his idea a reality.
His arts non-profit, Lost Bird,
the Scripps Institution of Oceanography,
a community of surfers with Surfrider Foundation,
and Futures Fins, one of the top
surfboard fin manufacturers.
- So this is it.
SmartFin is a very simple idea.
The performance is identical
to any performance surfboard fin.
But it records temperature and then we can record
with the GPS very detailed wave characteristics.
(upbeat music)
We're inviting surfers to view the ocean
as the coolest playground on Earth,
but also as a much, much bigger community
treasuring the ocean and how much we depend on it
for our own lives.
- [Narrator] Of course, there are other sensors
that record this data.
Those are usually expensive and float in the middle
of the ocean.
But with SmartFin, anyone with a surfboard
can help make this near-shore data
available to scientists like Phil Bresnahan,
a surfer and the chief engineer behind SmartFin.
(helicopter)
- So here's all the data that'd been collected
so far this year.
Some down in Fiji, Australia.
We're down here in La Jolla.
Thousands of sessions.
SmartFin is a combination of various printed circuit boards.
It's electronic circuits that combine a temperature sensor,
a motion sensor, and a GPS unit.
And they're all talking to a central microcontroller.
Which is essentially the brain of the entire thing.
They're all working together to collect
and eventually transmit the data to the cloud.
By working with the surf community that's already
in that ecosystem, we're able to figure out
what's happening in smaller spatial scales.
Which are ultimately what affect humans.
We don't experience the effects of global sea level rise,
we experience the effects of local sea level rise.
So by understanding what's happening
at these smaller scales by working with the surf community,
we're able to put some of those pieces together.
- [Narrator] Right now, there are about 300 SmartFins
around the world.
And Andy has built out his team with the goal
of getting thousands more in the water next year,
with updated technology to track even more data points.
- Most of the conversations about climate change,
There's nothing boring about SmartFin.
It's surfers.
They're cool.
(upbeat music)
- It's really important to work with the people
who are deeply invested in the future of that ecosystem
because they're the ones who are gonna wanna
continue surfing at breaks that operate
the way they always have.
So we think that they can get engaged in a way
that will really contribute to the protection
and stewardship of this environment
that they enjoy being in anyway.
- I would like to see every surfer in the world,
they tell me there's 23 million.
I would like to see every one ride a SmartFin.
- Hey guys, thanks for watching.
- If you enjoyed this video, like it
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