Sorry for the delay in posts, the Internet is very slow everywhere I’ve been in Bali, so it is fairly difficult to get anything accomplished, except surfing, which is fairly easy to get accomplished.

I am currently staying at a Hostel called Jacko’s place, which is kind of an off the map surf hostel where a lot of older Aussies come to spend a couple months for the summer.  It’s an interesting dynamic because the older guys know a good amount of Indonesian, so they often chat with the local hostel owners in Indonesian instead of talking to the younger surfers that are traveling through.  Though I would like to be stationed at a hostel with a few more international tourists, I think this hostel is a good place for me to be situated as there is a lot of local knowledge on the area, and it keeps me from just joining travelers on their vacations.

I have met  a couple of cool folks from San Francisco, and they were hanging out with a Dutch couple, so we had a few days of sightseeing and having nicer sitdown dinners.  The couple from Holland was extremely funny and interesting to be around, so it was good to get my time here started with some friends.  Now, though, they have left, and its interesting how difficult it is to try to make Balinese connections, as their language is completely foreign to me, and their English is not really to the extent of being able to talk about a world surfing reserve.

A Floridian named Curtis from the local nonprofit that’s cleaning the garbage situation here and installing a septic system has been really accommodating, friendly, and helpful, but he has been here for two years after embarking on a project that he thought would take a couple of months, and its interesting to see how it has affected him.  The lack of education on the effect of garbage and sewage on water quality makes getting anything accomplished extremely difficult.

Bali is a beautiful country, but it is being developed at such a rate that there’s a lot of smog from trucks and motorbikes, and in general it’s very busy.  The remote sites (like the one I am in) are very beautiful, but the roads going make me feel like I’m driving through a third-world Tokyo.  I took a two-hour drive on my rented motorbike to the Conservation International’s headquarters in the capital of Bali called Denpasar, and it was a pretty wild experience.  It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be, but there’s no rules and traffic sort of just flows chaotically, so i would usually just pick a car or bike to the right of me as sort of a shield from the traffic. In Bali, they drive on the left side of the road, which adds a little intricacy to the already insane driving scene.  But I made it to CI fine, and had a pretty good meeting with them all, where at the end we all ate Balinese food without silverware and only using your right hand.  The project seems good, but it’s interesting how out of touch the people at CI are to the actual scene of Uluwatu.  The consultant for the project has never even been to Uluwatu, and there has been zero conversation about the reasons for this study (which is to develop a large Marine Protected Area bigger than the surf reserve) to locals in the area.  So basically I am trying to figure out how to best establish relations with the locals, but again that’s difficult, one, because I’m not a near professional surfer which the Balinese surfers are and two, because I don’t speak the language, and environmentalism is not really very well known in the area.  So there are definitely difficulties, but for now, it’s like an eye-opening semi surf journey, where a large part of my day consists of just walking to the beach and talking to people along the way.  We’ll see how it all ends up.

It’s interesting how immersion has helped put me back in a new reality that I don’t really understand. I try to just take everything in contemplatively, without making too many judgments on it all. It’s difficult being here not completely on vacation like literally everyone else, other than the folks that live here.  But my overall health is good; other than some scrapes and losing a fin off my board, my bodily health is good except I’m feeling the effects of Bali Belly, which is apparently a right of passage of being here.

Northern California Coast

To date, working in Davenport, California has been the first time in my life that I have worked in an office. It has been amazing to experience the amount of work that goes into preparing a research project. For the best possible means of preparing a solution to ocean conservation from additional sources of funding (ie. Surfer’s potentially paying for the ecosystem service of surfing), a lot of care in establishing relationships with involved organizations and stakeholders has been essential. It is interesting to realize the way ideas are framed, and the language in which they are presented, is of upmost importance for positive results.

For this reason, the open-space work environment of Save the Waves Coalition has really helped me throw around various ideas and the framework of how I should present them. Being in an office with a handful of surfers who love the ocean environment, is always enjoyable. When someone gets over-burdened by tasks or stress, we lighten the load by sharing quick photos or videos of waves and surfing, or even going out to our backyard to watch waves run into the rocky cliff coast of Davenport, CA.

The most exciting and demanding part of my job thus far has been our Skype conversations across multiple time zones and ethnic groups and nongovernmental organizations. As I visited family in Vermont, we had a conversation linking Connecticut, Davenport, San Diego, Oahu, Australia, and Indonesia, all at the same time. In a large business oriented Skype conversation where you cannot see the eight other people on the conversation, listening and taking notes is key, because you may only get a couple of questions and a small chance to put in your two cents, so listening is the only solution to making your input worthwhile.

While the computer desk environment has helped build my professional skills of networking and preparing research designs in an efficient and timely manner, the outdoor environment around Northern California has kept me in wonder of the world in which we live. I’ve tried to offset the desk environment by camping around the Davenport area of northern California, and taking short trips up and down the coast to new beaches and vistas that I’ve never experienced before.
Though not yet in Bali, our own US environment is an incredible one, and I’ve included some pictures of the California coast that I’ve taken in my weeks preparing for the research project that I am about to embark on. While I have always loved traveling internationally, I believe very strongly in appreciating the beauty in our own wilderness, something that is often over-looked by active international travelers. Our world is a beautiful one, and the beauty of California has inspired me to enjoy and soak up the magnificence of Indonesia, but never to forget the beauty of the world that I am from.

My CBE fellowship has begun!  I have been lucky enough to become the World Surfing Reserve (WSR) Fellow for Save The Waves Coalition in Davenport, California.  We are developing a research project on the Bukit Peninsula, in Bali Indonesia.  Our research project aims to assess surf tourist’s willingness to pay (WTP) for marine and coastal conservation management.  The hope is uncover a means to use surfing as a tool for ocean conservation.  This project is the first of its kind, so we are all excited and actively preparing for the trip. As shown above, the guys at Save the Waves are forcing me to train hard both in and out of the office.

We are currently outlining a plan of action with partners from San Diego State University’s Center for Surf Research and Conservation International.  The project will combine a mixture of WTP survey methods along with economic valuation questions regarding the value and importance of environmental protection to the Uluwatu area.  We hope to find local stewards that will help us foster support to make Uluwatu a World Surfing Reserve.  A WSR would provide public awareness of  Uluwatu’s importance to the Indonesia, and the entire world surfing community, along with a local management team dedicated to the stewardship of the area.