We’re Surfers.

All of us.

The only difference is

what we’re surfing for.

Some surf for peace,

some surf for joy,

some surfing for creativity,

some surf to be cool,

some surf for establishment,

some surf against establishment,

some surf for solitude,

some surf for gregariousness,

some surf for nature,

some surf against nature,

but we all surf.

We enter nature’s realm

and lose ourselves.

But it’s not about surfing.

Some will always think it is,

but it’s not.

It’s about the freedom of

the unknown;

about the unique form

that has never happened before

and will never happen again.

It’s bout the absence

of rules and regulations,

and at the same time,

abiding by them.

Because the rules make sense.

They’re made for safety.

Water is dangerous

respect goes both ways.

And it is a free ocean.

Water exists in constant flux.

You can’t own the ocean,

even if countries claim to.

But we are the ocean.

We depend on it.

Seventy percent of us is made up of it.

Without it, we’re doomed.

So we bask in it,

like blind apes

in salmon costumes

without thinking about

what we’re doing to it.

And still I am you

and you are me

for we are but one

attached energy field talking different

shapes and colors.

We feel different

because we look different,

but that is only in the shell of the form

we can conceive with the human eye.

So, if you want to surf for peace,

or joy or creativity,

and you want to make a difference,

we need to start acting locally.

The place you are in should always

be your home and hearth

and we must learn

to treat it as such.

Plastics are not good for the ocean.

Nor are synthetic chemicals of any kind

that do not fully biodegrade organically

and exist in nature.

Alan Watts asks, “Are errors of congenital disease

or epidemics or pestilence necessary for maintaining

a balance of life?”

“Will correction of these errors

give rise in the long run to far more

serious problems than ones already solved?”

While it remains “up in the air,”

if you’ve traveled or even looked

at your own local place,

we haven’t come that far.

If anything, mobile technology has

driven us to be little more

than fanciful idiots.

There are obviously exceptions.

But exceptions don’t negate the rule.

There are exceptions

to every rule.

But to not be able to sit at a restaurant

table by yourself, let alone

with others, and not have a quick peak

at your phone isn’t exactly

Albert Einsteinlandia.

So let’s wake up.

It’s not too late.

We can change the way we live,

we can change the way we eat,

we can change the way we sleep.

But still I see no changes.

Perhaps the racist faces have improved,

but marginally, at best.

Saying our race has improved

would be a stretch of the imagination.

How many wars is the world in right now?

Not to mention our war on nature,

our own home and what

we rely on to survive as a

human race. So

let’s wake up.

It’s not too late.

I don’t think it’s too late.

Let’s listen to Tupac Shakur

and make some changes.

I do not agree with the Buddhist belief that life is suffering. Life is a beautiful, unknowable, and magical time of existence that will never happen again in the same manner that it happens now.

Surely though, unconscious life is, without question, suffering. And we are suffering. Our earth is suffering. If you are conscious about our earth, it is impossible to disagree.

This however, brings up many questions. What is consciousness? What is it to be unconscious? What is suffering? Books are obviously written about the answers to these questions. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, a good one to start is Alan Watt’s Man, Woman and Nature. For the sake of time however, my answers to these questions can be explicated by a story.

Yesterday, on my way to Ubud, I drove through Denpasar, the capital of Bali, one of the 7,000+ inhabited islands of Indonesia. Bali, approximately the size of Delaware, has the population of the country of New Zealand (~4,000,000). It is important to remember that Indonesia’s 7,000 inhabited islands comprise the 4^th most populous country in the world, right behind the United States. But are the States United? Is Indonesia united? That’s a question for a different time.

I wanted to see an area that I had not seen before. And not a nature-scape, but a real-life, raw, city, where millions of people live. From the beginning of the drive, I rode through black, grey, and green smoke shooting out of bikes, cars, and trucks, watching men banging on rebar and mixing cement with their hands. This wasn’t just in Denpasar, this was happening the entire way. And if you’re unfamiliar with Bali or Indonesia, this happens EVERY day, not just yesterday. When I arrived in Julia Robert’s Eat Pray Love-scape, Ubud, there the men were, pouring concrete with their hands and banging on rebar with hammers up on future high-rises (yes in Ubud!).

Living in Indonesia, this stuff ceases to surprise you. We black it out, turn a blind eye, no one wants to curtail development, even unconscious, unsustainable development. Chalk it up as a win for GDP.

What did surprise me, well not really surprise me, but stuck me, was a river I passed in Denpasar. In the middle of a bustling metropolis shanty town, a river gurgles with the beautiful sound of any babbling brook. Except this brook was covered with plastic as it waterfalled with gravity’s pull towards the ocean. Still though, as rivers often do, it brought me some peace. But even more sadness. A lot of sadness, actually. I think this is what consciousness is.

Opening our eyes. Being sad. Accepting the sadness. For we are not going to make changes if we are not sad about what we have done to the earth. We can be both sad and positive, though.   But we need to see and acknowledge what we have done first. If you haven’t had a good cry in a while, this will help (http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2011/11/the-dream-of-a-dying-albatross-chris-jordan/).

So how can we turn this sadness into positivity? Acknowledge that the plastic in the stream and in the Albatross’ stomach is from us. It isn’t from petroleum companies whose power is controlling us. It is that we use plastic straws and plastic spoons and plastic bags without seeing the polluted stream or the albatross killed by eating a used lighter it thought was a fish.

We could demand bamboo straws, and spoons, and cotton bags. We must demand these things. Or carry a pocket size spork with you if you want to eat on the go. Otherwise, wait until you’re home or use your hands. This is consciousness. When you use a plastic bag, a part of you should feel the sadness of the stream covered in plastic.

If you are in Indonesia, please learn one phrase: Saya Tidak Perlu Pipet. I do not need a straw. It is not necessary to explain why. I have never been looked at strangely for saying this. Because we do not need straws! It just makes sense. And still I forget to ask sometimes because I am still unconscious.

To remember, we have to be forward thinking. Remember how bad you would feel before you order a drink if your used straw killed a baby albatross. I know it kills a part of me every time I have an unnecessary straw in my drink because I wasn’t paying attention to my unconsciousness. Maybe it all starts with straws. Saya Tidak Perlu Pipet. You can ask this wherever you live.

So, I’m back in Uluwatu, in Bali, Indonesia.  Here’s why.  After teaming up with Conservation International last year, our surfonomics paper showed that Uluwatu brings an estimated amount of 35 million US dollars.  For any place in the world, that is a lot of money.  For Indonesia, it is a hell of a lot of money.  An estimated 250,000 tourists visit the surf break every year.  Though not all of the tourists surf, the surf break’s consistency, quality, and natural aesthetics may be unparalleled around the world.  As Project Clean Uluwatu manager Curtis Lowe likes to say, “Uluwatu is mother nature’s version of a goose that lays golden eggs, we don’t want to let this goose get destroyed.” Maybe that wasn’t verbatim.

Either way, it is a completely sustainable resource, that continues to provide, simply by existing.  Any human on earth can choose to visit and use the area for his or her enjoyment.  It is the Yosemite Valley of the surfing world.  The difference between Uluwatu and Yosemite is that Uluwatu is not a national park, nor does it have regulations and management practices that are taken seriously, even within the surfing community.

Therefore, I was tasked by Save The Waves Coalition to return, and help Uluwatu become a World Surfing Reserve.  An honor for any wave, a World Surfing Reserver would provide recognition, education on the area, along with a plan for its environmental caretaking.

While I was back in graduate school, finishing my masters in International Environmental Policy, with a specialization in Ocean and Coastal Resource Management, Project Clean Uluwatu has continued to thrive and built up community buy-in along with support from a portion of the local and international surfing community.  A great achievement in itself, not to mention building an organic biodigester to treat the sewage and kitchen waste, with an organic waste water garden for the recycled water.  Brilliant work, indeed, and I would say that all hats are off to Project Clean Uluwatu’s manager Curtis Lowe for his truly amazing commitment to care for a place he dearly loves.

Unfortunately, despite Curtis’ commitment, dedication, and relentless effort to keep the place clean, development threatens the surf break’s mere existence.  Unknown to nearly everyone in the community, certain developers have begun to clear cut the entire forest that surrounds the watershed of Uluwatu.  What remains, is a few trees within less than 50 meters of the gorge, and two, nearly 40 degree slopes, of limestone dirt and sediment that threatens to rush into the gorge during the next large rain event. Despite it being the dry season, last July, Uluwatu faced two of the biggest rain events of the entire year, and if this happens again this July, the breaks at Uluwatu, from Temples to Racetracks may be smothered and sediment, and potentially suffocated to death.

Uluwatu has become an endangered wave.

It is not pretty, and if you or anyone you know have connections in Bali, we must find our who the developers are, and see if we can place some sediment fences or other Best Management Practices (BMPs) to mitigate the unregulated and probably illegal development.

Until this threat is addressed, establishing a World Surfing Reserve will be stalled to ensure the surf break still exists in its pristine original condition.  Here is another sad view from the road.

We had hoped Conservation International would help us with the government to understand what exactly is going on, but their specialty is in Marine Protected Areas, and not necessarily watershed based management.  At the snail’s pace of getting anything accomplished in Indonesia, work on the reserve currently lags behind the threat to the break. So locally at Project Clean Uluwatu and Save The Waves Coalition, we will do everything we can do determine who is actually cutting down the trees, what the plans are, and what steps we can take to mitigate a large amount of sediment runoff destroying one of the best surfing areas on the planet.

In the meantime, I’ll try to end on a positive note as Uluwatu remains a special, beautiful place, with great waves and great people, and beauty.  Hopefully someday we will learn collectively to not take our beautiful places for granted. Here’s the view from Project Clean Uluwatu’s office at Suluban Beach (Uluwatu).  Please come visit and stop by if you are in Bali!!!

The blog was put on hold in order to fulfill some heavy leg work.  To be continued in May!  In the meantime, here’s some hedonistic surfing photos for public perusal!

The last week was Indonesia’s biggest holiday, where the last week of Ramadan made many Indonesian’s who live in Bali return home to Java, Sumatra, etc., to be with there families.  This past Saturday and Sunday, Ramadan coincided with two special days for the Balinese Hindu calendar as well.  Saturday was the Balinese day of consciousness and knowledge, followed by Sunday the day of cleansing and rebirth.

These two overlapping holidays made it a very unique time where there were many processions, and a lot of local workers taking time off to spend time with their families.  As we had finalized our survey, and Conservation International’s volunteer Indonesian students were on holiday, I was lucky to get the chance to go to Ubud, and spend time with some family and friends.  Oka Kartini, a local hotel owner explained to me the Balinese holidays and on Sunday, her and I dined together trying both of her sons’ versions of the traditional Balinese dish nasi kuning, Indonesian for yellow rice.  Sunday, the day of cleansing, is similar to our Thanksgiving, where family gathers and relaxes and eats all day long.  Though I was trying to shoot back to Uluwatu to catch Ripcurl’s Padang Padang Cup to meet more stakeholders in the surfing industry, it was hard to leave Oka and the restful harmony that is Ubud.

Leaving the baking heat of the Bukit Peninsula for Ubud was a special change.  First of all, Ubud has been developed for much longer than Uluwatu, and Ubud feudal leaders requested to keep Ubud as a protectorate under the Dutch rule.  For this reason, the tropical jungle town of Ubud became the literary and art reserve of Bali, attracting writers and painters from around the world.  Despite the busyness from the many tourists it attracts, Ubud remains a peaceful, blissful place.  One of the reasons is the architecture nearly everywhere consists of long windy complex temples filled with statues, fountains, and pools.

Every hostel and hotel follows this motif (and I know as I walked through nearly all of them trying to find a place, as it was full during the jazz festival which happened to be while I was there), offering nooks with views of tropical jungle and rice paddies that would make anyone in the world want to paint or write or simply be at peace.  Coming from a surf culture (or cultureless) place, it was very difficult to leave.  I believe that the rapid development from surf tourism made it difficult for a place like Uluwatu to develop within the Balinese architectural style of the rest of the country, and for that reason, it lacks some of the soul that has been created around the rest of Bali.

Ubud also gets its name from the Balinese word Ubad, which means medicine.  And yes, it is a very healing place.  But leave, I finally did, and caught most of the Ripcurl cup, and have been given a new task that I embark on this upcoming week.  I have been given a list of qualitative questions, and I am to interview hoteliers, warung owners, traveling surfers, local surfers, and non-surfing tourists to achieve a qualitative aspect for our research project, that will without doubt shed more light onto the goals we strive to achieve.

The past week has been a busy one.  Curtis and I finalized the application for Uluwatu to become Indonesia’s first World Surfing Reserve; Tom Margules and Conservation International (CI) and I finalized the questionnaire that we will be distributing in Suluban Beach (the surf spot known as Uluwatu).  Uluwatu has essentially 5 different breaks in itself known as Racetracks, Inside Corner, Outside Corner, Temples, and Secrets.  All of these breaks are accessed through Suluban Beach, which is not really a beach at high tide, but a gushing tide system into the famous cave at Uluwatu.  I also did some webpage developing and set up a merchandise shop for Project Clean Uluwatu hats on our website, and on facebook ( http://www.projectcleanuluwatu.com/#/pcu-gear/4578493093)  The shop does not currently ship abroad (or at all for that matter), but hopefully we will get there someday.   My web designing skills are growing, but let’s just say my knowledge is basic…

I also got some time to surf, and do a little traveling to see a little more of the island I live on, where I went to Kuta, Seminyak, and Canggu to do some surfing and sightseeing.  During this time we had a 24 hour 8 foot swell, which was producing easily double and almost triple overhead waves at Uluwatu, and some amazing barrels at Padang Padang.  When the swell is that large, it’s funny to see the normally crowded lineups disperse to a handful of adrenaline junkies waiting for one of the rides of their lives.

On the business front, I’ve finally got access to this nifty little office (but only on certain days, becasue it’s used to manage a Uluwatu Cliff Villas most of the week.

Curtis, the manager of Project Clean Uluwatu.

Yes. That is a zoomable and pan-able surf cam in the background, so we can know when we shouldn’t be working.  Working in the office here is actually a nice break from the sun, and it’s fun working with like-minded individuals who love to surf and enjoy the nature they are striving to protect.  It’s like being back in Save The Waves’ headquarters.  I have to talk STW into installing one of these handy cameras.

While the survey goes back and forth between Indonesia, USA, and Bali in its final steps of preparation, I took a step out to see the island, and got to see some other environmental issues around the island.  Here’s some beach development near Canggu.

Some more trash buring.

The below picture is probably the scariest of ocean environmental problem currently in Bali.  What do you think it is?

While it looks like a town in the distance, well, I guess it is, sort of.  It’s a town of fishing boats of the Uluwatu shores.  Bali’s sea life is notoriously over-fished, and in a 350 hour survey of diving around 35 dive sites in Bali, CI only sighted 3 total sharks, none on the main Balinese Island.  Apparently these boats are fishing for Octopus.  As we fish our way down the food chain, pretty soon these boats will be fishing for jellyfish for some good old-fashioned Jellyfish hamburgers. But we gotta start somewhere, so get one of these hats to help the Uluwatu cause!

These hats, as well as donations from the fundraiser, and generous online donors, are helping fund this 18 cubic meter biowaste septic facility.  The rains have finally slowed long enough that the Balinese workers have made some pretty good progress.

Having to refresh my 30-day Visa, I took a brief 36 hour trip to Singapore with a fellow traveler from Holland who is staying at Jacko’s Hostel with me in Uluwatu.  It was an impromptu journey, with no plans other than to walk around the city and stare at buildings and try some Singaporean cuisine.  This journey was a nice quick  break from Bali, and an extremely interesting adventure.  I think the pictures explain it best, so enjoy.

For those who haven’t been, Singapore is one of the most diverse cities in the world, which is especially unique for Asia.  We met Indonesians, Singaporeans, Malaysians, Chinese, Koreans, Armenians, and Mexicans all living in Singapore, along with expats, and I’m sure many other cultures.  Only a 2½ hour flight from Bali, the difference is tremendous, especially in terms of city planning on the greenness and cleanliness of the city.   It was a pretty extreme day of about 10 hours of walking, and a couple hours of dining above the city limits.  Not being a city person, I really enjoyed my short amount of time in Singapore, and really appreciate its dynamic qualities that cities around the world should aspire to.  Please enjoy this week’s photo blog!

Saturday night at Uluwatu Surf Villas, Project Clean Uluwatu, the only active local non-profit West side of the Bukit peninsula had their second annual fundraiser for the ongoing conservation projects.  It was a wonderful night of live bands, movies, live auctions, silent auctions, and raffle items of surf related gear and art.  It was the Bali version of the Life is a Wave Party that Save the Waves Coalition threw in San Francisco, right before I left the States.

Fundraising events in the surf industry are extremely interesting, because they really display the difference between those who care about giving to help protect the environment, and those who are merely just trying to benefit from it.  One would think, enormous companies like Quiksilver, RipCurl, Billabong, etc., could easily donate enough to complete Project Clean Uluwatu’s project (needing $35,000 to complete their organic septic system to collect sewage from most of the restaurants on the Uluwatu cliffs).  Instead, these companies throw enormous surf contest events at all of the local breaks, make tons of revenue from merchandise, advertising, etc, and donate a couple of boards and t-shirts instead of donating any money.  Quiksilver, in fact, requested that they be paid $1,000 back after donating a Kelly Slater board and some prints of artwork, to cover their materials costs.

It’s obvious that money rules around the world, but Quiksilver, probably the biggest of all the surf was the only donor that requested money in return for their donation.  Is that a real donation?  You really need $1,000 to keep your mega multinational corporation running?  At the auctions, donors were offering up to $3,000 to raise funding for boards worth lest than 1/5 of the price to help out the environment they surf in. Surf Companies however, try to cut the corners wherever they can.  I will say that Ripcurl Asia was a pretty good sponser for the party as they provided a good amount of resources to help make the party happen.  Still, their involvement seems like a simple write-off to help raise awareness of their huge surf contest at Padang Padang this upcoming month.

In US dollars, the amount needed to complete the project is not extremely high.  I continually find it surprising that a megacorporation won’t just chip in for all the funding to complete a sewage treatment plant that will give Uluwatu 15 years of sewage protection.  I suppose they get enough press without funding projects like this, so no reason to set the standard.  Other than the current state of board manufacturing, surfing is one of the most environmentally friendly sports around, and it never fails to bewilder me as to why these very wealthy companies don’t do more to promote environmental projects.  Rather than complain, Project Surf Uluwatu just gets it done themselves, and raises $18,000 for their project! (http://live.ripcurl.com/surf-memorabilia-auction-in-bali-raises-over-18000.html) *Note the RIPCURL website, promoting the Padang Padang Cup.  How much money will that bring in?  Since it’s a megacorporation, we’ll never know

*Uncle Bob is a (semi)fictional character that does not believe in Climate Change or environmental initiatives.

Dear Professor (who introduces MIIS IEP Students to Uncle Bob*),

Being that it’s the 4th of July (actually the 5th now in Indonesia), I thought you might be interested to know that I sat in my room quietly and listen to “Uncle Bob” sit and discuss global warming, climate change, and pollution to a European Australian, and a guy from Spain.  Now, usually I would have liked to join this conversation, but I’ve been suffering fairly badly from Bali Belly the last few days, and needless to say, I was listening while shivering, covered in my towels and sheets in 90 degree Indo weather.

This was an unusual uncle Bob, a guy about my age, who was actually in support of “environmentalism” (we do still need to change the word and the overall mindset of what that means).  As I was sitting there praying I wouldn’t die from typhoid or whatever, I wanted to take in all of Uncle Bob’s arguments, but mostly they wound up as complaints, and the arguments incorrect. (I would actually love read some of my peers’ Uncle Bob papers to teach me more about how to dissuade Uncle Bob)  “I have traveled all through Sumatra and climate change is real, I see people burning there garbage in their backyard, and white smog coming through the tailpipes of every truck.  In America, we do something about that.” I’m sure you get, some classic 4th of July belligerence, about how developing countries are at fault and global warming sucks for the surf (we have a 10 dayish period of 1-2 ft waves).
As I am lying in bed feeling horrible, about both my digestive system and the ridiculously erroneous words being thrown about at 1 in the morning when everyone else is asleep, I know that I have to say something, but I need to figure out how to make a point, and be on Uncle Bob’s side, with filling in some information, and somehow get past the complaining.  We are getting well aware that our earth is getting pretty rough-housed these days, and my ultimate goal is to stop the complaining about it, and do something about it.  But like you said, it’s hard, this field we’re in.

So my first objective was to help clarify some of the facts, that the Europeans weren’t quite agreeing with.  One, the earth is not in danger; humans are in danger.  The hole in the Ozone is not burning away at a rate where soon the earth will be a fiery ball, we’ve done fairly decent work with CFCs and HCFCs ect., but burning petroleum, whether it be petroleum or plastic bags, bottles, or debris, is really adding to global warming, or its euphemism, climate change.

Uncle Bob was startled for this response jumping out of a hostel room, and the European Austrailian asked, do you think global warming is human caused, and not just some government conspiracy?  YES.  IT IS CAUSED BY HUMANS.  Levels of CO2 are increasing at an alarming rate that have never been seen before, we are in the midst of the 6th mass extinction, and the levels of GHGs being emitted by humans are unparalleled to anything in the earth’s history.

Lastly, since silence was the ultimate goal, I said, “while I love a heated discussion about the environment, complaining and arguing over the problems is getting us nowhere, so if you’re going to argue about the environment at 1:30 in the morning, argue about how you’re going to fix it.  Don’t drive your scooter that sends soot in the air at ridiculous levels to the surf spot.  Walk.  Don’t use single-use plastics.  Teach.  Indonesian’s have a sense that burning everything is not right, nor the answer, but they don’t have the education or the means to do anything different.  It’s up to the educated to help teach and help provide solutions to these sorts of problems.

The biggest eye-opener of my project has been my attempt to explain to a coconut vendor, why I wouldn’t use a plastic straw, and was just drinking the water out of the coconut.  My Bahasa Indonesian is not very good, so I said, if I use this, it becomes trash.  She replied, “it’s not trash, it’s clean I just opened the container.” My attempt to explain that it would become trash after I used it, did not really ever hit home.  It’s pretty difficult to teach anyone, when the store owner’s 8-year old doesn’t go to school because she tends the store all day, while her mother takes care of the younger ones.  Her daughter’s math is quite good working with money all day, but the environment, what the hell is that?

Which is why the Center for the Blue Economy’s goal, has got to be the answer in places like Southeast Asia.  If Bali had a power plant that created energy from garbage, like Sweden and Norway, there would be incentive for stores and hostels to collect their trash, and get something in return for it.  Otherwise, there is no reason to collect your trash that you throw over the fence, other than to protect some surfers from floating garbage, that you probably don’t like that much anyway.

With a philosopher’s spirit, I am trying to brainstorm a way to convince people to change their behavior and ideas, but as you well know, it’s hard.

Bali’s waves are pretty nuts.  The swell has been firing lately.  The very first day I arrived I got a two-second barrel and the next day caught one of the longer rides of my life.

I’ve gotten worked pretty badly a few times at double overhead Ulu’s, lost a fin, and dinged fiber carbon railed board already, so it’s all pretty exciting.  When it’s super huge, I go around the corner to Impossibles, Bingin, Dreamland, or Balangan, where it’s possible to find a barrel or a peeling lefthander almost everyday.  But the trash in the water at Dreamland and Balangan is pretty extreme.  After a couple days of rain and 25kt onshore winds (really unusual for this time of year), there were guys surfing in barrels with garbage literally spitting over their heads.  It made me a little angry at being a human, honestly.
My project has been pretty interesting so far.  My first goal has just been to make connections with the locals and people who know about the area.  I’ve become fairly close with Jeff Bushman, a famous surfboard shaper who spends most of his time in Hawaii, but occasionally comes here to shape boards.  Through him, and the hostel surfing life, I’ve met a good amount of Aussies, mostly, but guys who have been here for 30 years, and know a ton about the history of the place and things like that.  While many of the Balinese know English, I haven’t really met any Bali folks who have been able to tell me very much about the history and even less about environmental initiatives, but I’ve been working with a local NGO called Project Clean Uluwatu (PCU).  Working with PCU I hope to meet more locals that sometimes help volunteer with his project, but trying to spearhead an environmental management team of local Indonesians seems fairly difficult, without having a longer amount of time to establish friendships, which are necessary to get anything accomplished around Bali.

There’s just too much tourism, and so much money to be made in it, that there’s not very many people who like taking a step back to say, hey let’s think about what we’re doing here. Also, probably only about 15 years ago, most of the food products in the country were wrapped in banana leaves, so it’s custom to throw the new food wrappers into the forest, and burin it when the pile gets too big.  It’s crazy to see what’s happened, and it honestly may be too late (like everyone says), but I think if they installed like an energy plant that made electricity from garbage as they do in Scandinavia, there could be an incentive to collect garbage, which would have an enormous impact.
I did have one interesting conversation with an Australian who has been coming here for almost 40 years. He gave me a different view-point about my meeting with Conservation International.  CI is trying to establish a Marine Managed Area through the government, essentially a National Marine Park on the Bukit, but the consultant is an Indonesian women who has not yet a gotten a chance to visit the area.  Supposedly, people on the Bukit essentially hate the government, because the government sent the rejects and sickly people out of Kuta to the Bukit about 50 years ago.  Kuta, 50 years ago, was the surf center and very nice, clean area in Bali.  Today, it is more like Las Vegas on the beach, with nightclubs, bars, and general anarchy happening everywhere.  The ocean is also quite filthy in Kuta, compared to a relatively clean Uluwatu.

Today, CI is very casual about being like, yeah the government wants to come in and manage this area.  It is hard for me to imagine that the “rejects” of Uluwatu, some of whom are making a very good living with their Warungs (Indonesian for restaurant/store) established for surf tourism, will be that excited about learning the government intends to start managing their territory. It’s sort of a difficult place to be in the middle of.  It’s great to be supporting environmental management, but getting to know a small community who was thrown out of the good land, makes me realize the difficulties of supporting environmentalism, especially with the many other factors at play. It reminds me of this great environmental article by the NYTimes (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/magazine/who-would-kill-a-monk-seal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)