Chris Nelson: 5 Things I Learned While Making The Big Sea
Chris Nelson: 5 Things I Learned While Making The Big Sea
Lessons learned while making the hard-hitting documentary from writer and producer Chris
Occasionally in life a story comes along that changes everything. You hear something you cannot unhear, learn something you cannot un-learn. After that nothing is the same. I never thought that would happen with a story linked to surfing. It’s not like I wear rose tinted glasses. After 25 years working with the industry I’m well aware that the business of surfing is not some bastion of equality and environmentalism, despite the heavy spin put out by surf brands.
However three years ago I learned that Neoprene - the commercial name for chloroprene rubber - was being produced in the heart of a region known as Cancer Alley – a stretch of land five miles wide, along the banks of the Mississippi, between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. This is an area with over 200 petro-chemical and industrial plants, but the worst polluter by far is owned by a multinational called Denka, a company that manufacturers chloroprene rubber aka Neoprene. Denka supplies the majority of chloroprene rubber used by the surf industry. The cancer risk in the community that lives close to the Denka facility is the highest in the USA; the EPA states it is 50 times the national average.
In early 2020 Lewis Arnold showed me the short film he’d just made with the community living close to the Denka plant and it shook me. Despite being a writer covering surfing for the last 25 years I’d never heard the term chloroprene, let alone heard about surfing’s link to a population decimated by toxic pollution created as a result of our leisure pursuit. Lewis and I talked at length and decided to work together in order to produce a feature documentary, thoroughly investigating and exposing this scandal. The result is The Big Sea. It has been a three year mission, a true team effort. Along the way I have learned many lessons, about trying to get an independent feature documentary off the ground, about the surfing world I’ve been so heavily invested in, and about what true activism means – and looks like.
1. Making a fully independent documentary is a bit like a being a start-up company.
When you are self-financing a film there’s no money. The budgets we had discussed with potential production partners at the start of this process never materialised. Every part of our process had to be done in the most cost effective way, with Lewis and I taking on multiple roles. It meant long hours and hard yards. However, there is also an upside to this. You can be fast, fluid and responsive. You have to be innovative, which gets the creative juices flowing. You also get to work with good people. On The Big Sea we built a small team of super creative friends who were similarly motivated by the project and brought passion, imagination and energy. On this project I navigated many roles, from the familiar such as interviewing, forensically going through transcripts and weaving the narrative together, to the unfamiliar - being the sound guy, working with the legal team and handling financials. It’s all learning. I look at the budgets I drew up originally and laugh at how much… or how little, we made this for. Which leads onto:
2 Take a problem, and make it a feature
A few years ago I wrote a documentary about Atari – pioneers of the world of video games. In 1972 one of the founders, Al Alcorn, invented Pong - a simple tennis style game that revolutionised home entertainment. The limitations of technology meant the only sound effect they could produce was a basic ‘pong’ when the ball was struck. He took this problem and ran with it – making it not just the game’s defining feature, but it’s name.
This ethos was a guiding principle. With The Big Sea our lack of external funding meant we had many limitations - what we could do geographically, graphically, how we could shoot, who we could shoot with, how long for and where. Ultimately we used the constraints as a focus, making them a part of the style, storytelling and aesthetics of the project.
3. Surfing is a tight knit community
In the waveriding world there is a certain common bond we all share, which is great. If you need to reach out to someone across the globe there is always a mutual friend who can make an introduction. People are more likely to open the door to a fellow surfer, more likely to be candid and off the cuff in an interview situation, because it’s a community, right? A closed circle. Which has also been part of the problem.
The majority of the surf industry is overseen by white, middle class males. Counterparts at the brands know each other. They hang out at contests and trade shows, go for beers together, maybe surf together. They’re mates. They’ve come up through the industry together. The same is pretty much true of the surf media. But what happens when you find out that something is wrong – something is rotten? Who in that group is going to rock the boat? We’ve seen this in other industries – like entertainment and #MeToo. A scandal erupts and everyone says, ‘how come we didn’t know?’ – except it turns out that of course people did know, but no one wanted to be the first to say it. And this is true of Neoprene production for wetsuits and its links to Cancer Alley. Despite the number of surf brands using Neoprene, despite the number of product managers whose job it is to oversee supply chains, nobody has ever publicly said ‘Did you know chloroprene rubber for wetsuits has links to Cancer Alley?’ These conversations have happened behind closed doors and been conveniently brushed under the carpet. That’s what I find most shocking.
4 Inertia is a powerful thing
Surfing is dynamic and fluid, ever changing, fluctuating, shifting with the tides, the days and the seasons. Yet the surf industry is a giant, unwieldy behemoth. Gordon ‘Grubby’ Clark dominated the global surf blank industry when he abruptly shuttered the business in 2005. At the time it was seen as a chance to break away from a toxic and environmentally unsustainable technology that had dominated surfboard manufacturing since just after WW2. New brands did emerge, cutting edge ideas for surfboard composites, innovative materials – and yet today, most surfers are still riding the same type of boards, manufactured in the same style. Toxic and unsustainable. New blank producers popped up and filled the gap in market, drowning out innovation. Surfing seems to revel in the status quo.
However with wetsuits, there is not merely a light at the end of the tunnel, there is a quiet revolution taking place. There is a readily available alternative to petrochemical or Limestone derived chloroprene rubber. It is natural rubber – from a tree. What could be better? It is cheaper than chloroprene, it’s sustainable, the trees it comes from pull CO2 from the atmosphere rather than adding to it, and crucially it’s accepted by the industry to perform as well as, if not better than Neoprene. If brands shift we can have cheaper, better, environmentally friendly wetsuits as standard within a few years.
5. I still believe surfing has the power to affect change
The Big Sea tells a simple yet complex story. It is the time-worn tale of a powerful multinational discharging toxins into the environment, devastating a disenfranchised local community. Within are many layered narratives involving historic repression, slave plantations, environmental racism, the opacity of global supply chains and the blinkered nature of a culture that considers itself a bastion of environmentalism.
However at its core it is a human story of two, seemingly unrelated communities, bound together. With any story I tell I feel pressure to do it justice – but with this one there are real ramifications. It’s literally a life and death tale. The people of St John have told their stories of loss and suffering to countless journalists, from many outlets across the globe, but change hasn’t come. I believe the surf community can be the ones to lead the change and that begins with a simple decision – stop buying Neoprene. In doing so we stop supporting the brands that support Denka, the brands that put money in Denka’s pockets. Because we all have the power in our wallets to make a difference, make ourselves heard. Lobby your favourite surf company. Ask why they are still wedded to a toxic chemical with links to Cancer Alley – when there is a natural alternative that is as good, if not better.
The River Parishes along the banks of the Mississippi have a dark past, the soil is steeped in suffering and injustice, the air is now heavy with pollution – but there is still a chance that the surfing community can work with the communities in Louisiana, to usher in a brighter future.
You can find out more about The Big Sea and the facts behind surfing’s links to Cancer Alley at thebigsea.org