Swimming and surfing in ocean ecologies: encounter and vulnerability in nature-based sport and physical activity

To date, research about human-environmental health and wellbeing thinking has tended to centre the health and wellbeing benefits for humans from time spent in nature. That is, we remain most concerned with the benefits of ‘nature’ to human health. However, nature-based sports and physical activities, like swimming and surfing, challenge such human-centerdness by ‘resituating’ swimmers and surfers in multispecies ecologies. By creating opportunities for experiencing encounters that highlight our vulnerability, sports and physical activities offer an example of how ecologies are part of our everyday lives in real ways, and have great value in encouraging greater environmental awareness and care across communities. Drawing on ecofeminist frameworks, I have been exploring how recreational sports and physical activities shape participants’ relationships to ocean and coastal ecologies. In this discussion I will draw on fieldwork and interview data with ocean swimmers and surfers to explore how the encounters they have when immersed in the ocean can create a sense of vulnerability that acts to remind us we are part of the ocean ecology. In this way, sport and leisure have great value for activating a greater sense of how human and environmental futures are interconnected.