Long Beach Daughter Jericho Poppler and the Beginnings of the Surfrider Foundation

These days Jericho Poppler contents herself with various philanthropic pursuits and her duties as trustee of the Huntington Beach International Surf Museum, but step back in time nearly 50 years ago and Poppler was riding the waves with balletic and lyrical grace, whose style and athleticism blurred gender lines and earned her the United States Surfing Championship crown in 1970, as well as many international titles in a long and dominating career. The Long Beach native and Wilson High graduate would go move into the area of environmentalism by becoming a founding member of the Surfrider Foundation, a non-profit created in 1984 by Poppler and a group of Malibu surfers to protect and preserve our beaches and oceans (she now serves on its advisory board) and creating the annual “Jericho’s Kids for Clean Waves,” an educational outreach and surf contest for kids 16 and under.

The Surfrider Foundation maintains chapters nationwide and in 15 countries, with each chapter focused on preserving an aspect of water quality in the area served. The Long Beach chapter focuses its primary effort nowadays on reconfiguring the Long Beach breakwaters in order to bring back the waves to the shores of Long Beach. Surfing in Long Beach, you ask? That was a long time ago, in the era prior to World War II, when Long Beach was known to the world as the “Waikiki of Southern California” and even produced a 1939 surfing contest, according to the Long Beach Surfrider website.

The breakwaters were developed during World War II to serve as part of a deepwater port project used by the Navy. As the years passed and the Navy abandoned its outpost, the negative effects of the breakwater could be seen through the deterioration of the Long Beach waterfront and the trapping of urban runoff and pollutants within the harbor. People wanted the waves back; they wanted the natural ocean currents, the pristine quality of water not seen since the days before World War II. Since 2000, a grassroots-led coalition within the Surfrider Foundation has been focused on reconfiguring the Long Beach breakwaters. They have the support of the Long Beach City Council and assistance from the Army Corps of Engineers in making this happen.

And Jericho Poppler’s dreams of preserving California’s legendary waves live on.

The Long Beach Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation gladly accepts donations and volunteers in beach clean-ups, letter writing campaigns to congressional leaders and fundraising.

www.lbsurfrider.org