Somehow the divine laws of Karma granted me a first-class, all expense paid trip to Portugal last summer. Despite traveling in style with champagne, edibles, and lay flat seats, I arrived sleep deprived. Many cafézinhos were needed to make it from the airport to Supertubos but once we saw the waves, our spirits were up. It’s funny how offshore winds can make drowsiness suddenly disappear.
I’m not a pro surfer, I’m a writer. Wherever I go, it’s not about me catching waves; it’s about what stories are important from each place. Often that involves the challenges that come with overdevelopment, climate change, and gentrification (you know the drill). At the best of times, the stories are about innovative solutions that are locally managed and support both the environment and the economy.
In that regard, this story from Nazaré may just be the best one yet.
I was invited on this remarkable journey by Tudor Watch to meet Nic von Rupp and Clement Roseyro as part of a three-day press trip. It was rad. It was bougie. I even got to practice towing in with some of the best to ever do it (Nic and Clement are 2x winners of the Nazaré Big Wave Challenge). It was not the sort of thing that happens often to surf journalists.
It should be known that I was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and speak fluent Portuguese, but this was my first time visiting Portugal. Being able to connect in the language — even if my gringo face and brazzo accent raised some eyebrows — only deepened the experience. Hearing the jokes of the local heavies makes me laugh to this day.
The best part of it all, though, was learning that there would soon be a regenerative seaweed farm just south of Nazaré spearheaded by Nic’s lifelong friend and big wave mentor, João Macedo, through his Hope Zones Foundation (HZF). This was brought to my attention by Michael Stewart, the co-founder of Seatrees, who happened to be going to Portugal at the same time. The trip set the stage for a unique partnership detailed in the Seatrees film, Growing In The Shadow of Mountains.
Michael had known João for many years, ever since João lived in San Francisco and they’d often surf together on big days at Ocean Beach. Since returning to Portugal, João was part of the first wave of Nazaré pioneers and has since been hard at work on restoring an ancestral connection between land and sea.
Nazaré Harbor
The Nazaré harbor is a scene unlike many others. On one hand, it is a classic fishing harbor filled with boats, lines, cages, and, of course, fishermen. On the other, it is a meeting place for some of the world’s most elite surfers and all the jet skis, tow boards, paddle guns, camera crews, contests, fans, and sponsors that come with them.
Inside the one cafe offering basic sandwiches, espresso, boat provisions and a cigarette machine, is where you can see all the different creatures mingling. Some may be in a stupor, thanking God that they are still alive. Others may just be stopping by on their yachts, restocking en route to the Mediterranean. Others still are exchanging stories of rough seas, big hauls, and all that comes with the life as un pescador.
The harbor is only a short drive from the center of town, where deep history can be felt everywhere from the narrow cobblestone streets to the now famous Forte de São Miguel. It is there where the lighthouse stands stoically perched above the monstrous beach break at Praia do Norte. Over the past decade, the harbor has played host to a range of otherwise unlikely partners like Tudor Watch, Mercedes Benz and Red Bull. It’s been a frequent setting in the Emmy-winning HBO show “100 Foot Wave”, and a few years back even Lamborghini was intrigued enough to choose Nazaré and the harbor as the backdrop for their new SUV launch.
As the reputation grew, tourism thrived. Sightseeing trips began to leave daily from the harbor. New hangars were built and outfitted with the fastest jetskis. Despite all the new energy and commercial activation, the fishermen didn’t exactly have equity. So a plan was born alongside all of this newfound fame with careful consideration and planning by the Hope Zones Foundation (HZF) to launch Portugal’s first regenerative seaweed farm just ten minutes south of the world’s most famous wave.
Founded by João Macedo, HZF has the backing of surfers like Nic von Rupp, Miguel Blanco, Laura Crane, and, most importantly, the blessing and collaboration of local fishermen like Captain Joaquim Zarro, who recognize how seaweed farming can play a key role in helping sustain the seas.
While the massive wave understandably grabs a majority of the attention when thinking of Nazaré, there is much more to love than just adrenaline-dripped big wave surfing. Truth be told, the spectacle of the wave birthed a new life for the town and surfing, in general, has generated new life into the entire coastline and become a point of national pride. But it wasn’t always this way.
As Captain Zarro says, “Before surfing, there was only God and fishing.”
History
In 1308, King Dinis of Portugal signed a decree mandating the trade of a seaweed, locally known as sargaço, which was used to naturally enrich the land and increase agricultural yields. The King knew that seaweed could be the key to a mightier realm. This is the oldest known law regarding ocean farming, and we would be well served by it today.
The benefits of near-shore ocean farming, as realized time and again throughout different cultures and civilizations from the Romans to the Han Dynasty, are twofold: one being that ocean farming takes up zero arable land and requires no inputs such as water or fertilizer. The other being that the outputs, or harvest, can provide food to eat and fertilizer for land-based agriculture.
It was only in the late 20th century that the tradition of seaweed farming had lost its role in Portuguese waters. As the use of synthetic fertilizers exploded from the 1950s onward, traditional farming practices around the world were foolishly undervalued and overlooked.
Portugal stands uniquely poised to lead not just Europe but the entire Western Hemisphere, if they were to quickly re-incentivize or even mandate the implementation of projects like the Nazaré farm. This isn’t just feel-good environmentalism nor greenwashing, this is about supporting the fishermen for generations to come.
Because without fish, there would be nothing.
Fishermen & Regenerative Ocean Farming
Regenerative ocean farming (ROF) is basically a fancy way of saying aquaculture that doesn’t suck. It’s quite the opposite of the gnarly salmon farming operations found in places like Chile, Tasmania, Scotland, and both coasts of the U.S. and Canada. ROF today isn’t just about fertilizing the land, it’s about supporting the very systems which sustain all marine biodiversity.
Let’s get one thing clear: to be in support of ROF and ocean conservation doesn’t mean that you’re against fishing. The goal is never to work against small fishing operations, but rather to safeguard the ocean against the destruction from industrial fishing fleets and bottom trawlers. Not only do ROF projects help fish stocks, they create new jobs such as seaweed farming and harvesting in the blue economy.
ROF can come in many forms, and the one in Nazaré has a unique setup thanks to an artificial reef installed back in 2010. Made of some 1,050 concrete modules, the reef was put in place to help create new underwater habitats with biodiversity in mind. Think of it as an insurance policy for future generations to help replenish fish stocks. Although the structures certainly helped, fifteen years later something was still missing: kelp.
As Michael Stewart put it, “It was kind of like building a neighborhood but not adding a grocery store.” The first phase of the HZF project, which began in October 2024, was adding seeded kelp lines to the existing infrastructure. The kelp lines were created with the help of João Franco, a renowned marine ecologist who specializes in algae, at the marine lab known as MARE IPL in nearby Peniche.
By engaging the help of the local fishermen, this project created a template for a potentially new type of conservation strategy that could bolster existing marine protected areas (MPA) — a type where fishing is voluntarily replaced with farming in a small area that is managed by fishermen to help enrich the surrounding areas. Even if you designated as little as 5% of the coastline in Portugal to these types of ocean farms, fisheries would rebound and become more resilient.
Captain Zarro recognizes this, “This is not just good for the planet, it’s good for the fish and the fishermen as well."
The pushback around MPAs typically comes from the fact that a non-local authority, like the government in Washington, London, Ottawa or Brussels declares that an area that has been fished since forever is now suddenly off-limits. While letting areas restore by prohibiting access is one way to try and help, the better strategy is to encourage and support locally-led regenerative solutions.
Macedo had this in mind when he was dreaming up the project from his office in the harbor. “Ocean conservation needs to have fishermen as guardians of these MPAs. By creating a kelp farm, we’re also thinking of it in an entrepreneurial way by restoring the role that seaweed had for centuries.”
These connections in Nazaré are an example of what has drawn me to work with the team at Seatrees, a leading nonprofit environmental organization based in California, that specializes in restoring and protecting coastal ecosystems around the world in collaboration with local community partners — like the surfer-led crew at Hope Zones.
Having now visited Seatrees project sites in three countries (Mexico, Costa Rica, and Portugal) I can safely say that they support the right people, in the right way. Rather than come in with a know-it-all attitude, their approach is to listen to and learn about what is needed to restore local marine ecosystems, and then to support them with a combined effort focused on fundraising, storytelling and scientific best practices.
Now more than ever, these farms and practices like the restoration of mangroves, oysters, and coral are needed, and the main idea is always to support the overall system and not to prohibit people from fishing.
Big Waves, Big News
The Nazaré farm is a unique example of what could be a high-profile pilot project that catapults ocean farming into the mainstream, much like the giant wave that thrust an old fishing village into the global limelight.
In North America, the regenerative ocean farm movement is strong in New England but regulated almost to the point of prohibition in California. There would be no downsides to a wide-scale emphasis of ocean farms up and down our coasts. The idea is that they don’t have to be huge operations to have a significant impact. In fact, it would be best for them to grow into a giant patchwork of small, locally-owned farms rather than a few giant corporate farms.
In Nazaré, the hope is that the proximity to the big waves will cause big news. As Macedo said, “The idea was to create a project that can keep up with the fame of the wave.”
To be fair, as a massive beach break with insane hype on wave heights and world records, it’s not everyone’s favorite wave. Many big wave purists would rather paddle Pe’ahi or brave the freakish and frigid waves at Maverick’s and Mullaghmore. Regardless, with the right attention, the Nazaré farm could serve as a powerful way for people to realize we don’t need to invent our way out of crises because some of the best methods to ensure our future survival already exist, and regenerative ocean farming is at the top of the list.
Part of that attention will come from the continued support of Nic von Rupp and his new organization, Mountains of the Sea, a big wave outfit and modern media organization with a hangar in the harbor not far from the HZF headquarters. Without a doubt, all of the people involved are powerful allies, not just for their country but for the ocean as well. As we can all agree, more fish and more jobs are good things. It’s now up to us to engage the seas and demand change.
I am so grateful to have been able to visit Nazaré to meet João, Nic and the merry crew of big wave pranksters who are wholeheartedly committed to their waterman way of life and giving back to what has given them so much. Now it’s time to spread the word on the revolutionary idea that’s just waiting to happen (again).
As of January 24, 2025, SeaTrees is
actively campaigning and fundraising
for the Nazaré farm, visit seatrees.org
for more info.
