Russell Ord wasn't supposed to be in the lineup at Maverick's on his Wave Runner Saturday. Technically he was breaking a recently passed ban on personal watercraft (PWCs) in the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary imposed by NOAA.
Luckily that didn't stop him from heading out on his PWC to shoot photos of surfers braving a clean late January swell.
Sadly due to the folks that think the 4-Stroke Jetski's disturb the Harbor seals over a mile away won the day. I think a good compromise would be 5-10 Tag's that a Jet Ski'er could pick up as they launched out of the harbor. We don't need 34 Ski's out there, but 5-10 would be good.
Regulators of all stripes spend lots of time limiting behavior and almost no time measuring the effects of those limitations. San Francisco instituted the most onerous rent controls in the country and didn't commission an economic study of the effects until 30 years later. Can you imagine how low on the list a surf watercraft vs. seal copulation study is?
I think that @lkilpatrick's idea is a sound start. A better solution would be to stop empowering people to arbitrarily make decisions on our behalf and not hold them accountable to the effects of those decisions.
Also I disagree w/ the person in the article who said, "If something happens to Jacob or any of these surfers there's no question it's on NOAA's shoulders." That is complete crap. This is a high risk game and these guys knew what they were getting into. If people think surfing Mavs w/o motorized life guards is too risky, then they should surf somewhere else.
All that aside, I really hope Jacob recovers and I congratulate the chain of highly competent people who rescued him.
Do the photogs on the cliff still use the two way radios to talk to the "water patrol" I saw them doing this back in 1994 and it seems like a good set up and the upper level peeps have a great vantage point to see and large outside sets and any possible tombstones.
But on another note....The only person you should rely on in such heavy conditions is oneself . If you're not up for it don't do it.
