ECOCULTURAL IDENTITY
We sit down with a modern-day surfing icon, Dave “Rasta” Rastovich, dubbed a “global surf activist” who over a decade ago sailed with Sea Shepherd to stop the black market dolphin trade in Japan. Now he’s raising his three-year-old son, Minoa, with life-partner Lauren Hill, and Rasta’s focus has shifted to fighting for more local, yet equally as important, issues. Closely following his environmental activism with projects like, “Saving Martha”, “Fight for the Bight” over the last few years, and more recently, the work he has been doing with the help of Pure Scot on the “Great Reef Census project”, we feel privileged to yarn with a salt-gnarled guardian of our natural world.
“I think it’s important that we acknowledge that we do give a crap.”
Surfing Life: Do you believe there is a culture of environmentalism within surfing?
Rasta: Do you?
SL: Yes.
Rasta: You do?
SL: Yes, and for a very long time, for example, the gas mask photo in the barrel shot at Manly in the ’80s, Save Our Spit (SOS), Fight for the Bight, Surfers Against Nuclear Destruction (SANDs) and so on … at least more than a lot of societies.
Rasta: Yeah, that was a great picture that one. Um, I think there is potential for it everywhere. I think there’s the—I don’t like this word—but the obligation too. But not even obligation, but responsibility. I think, from my experience, I have been really fortunate to travel to a lot of surfing communities around the world. The ones who are actually doing something with their concerns for the community or ecology are women. It’s usually the women doing it and the men come later.
