The sea temperature offthe Gower Peninsula in Wales fell to 6C on March 10-11th, but the three-milestretch at Llangennith was dotted with neoprene balaclavas as weekend surferswaited for their next waves. For serious surfers the cold is a boon：it drives away the the crowds who plague popular beachesin summer.
Surfing is growing fast, with the number of surfers worldwide increasing from26m to 35m between 2001 and 2011. Growing demand for waves means thatovercrowding will get worse unless more waves are found. ゛Surfing is not like golf,゛explains PeteJones, a Llangennith surfing tycoon and former European champion. ゛You can build golf courses, but you can't make morewaves.゛
Surfers' behaviour will chime with anyone familiar with the economics ofoveruse. One response to crowding is a quota system, as with fish stocks. Atthe best spots, advanced surfers informally queue for waves. Anyone baggingmore than their fair share can expect harsh words, or in extreme cases evenviolence, particularly if they are visitors.
An alternative to quotas is to grant ownership rights：once someone owns a natural resource, they can restrictits use sensibly, as with tradable pollution permits. This has been tried too,at one of the best waves in the world, a Fijian monster surfers call ゛cloudbreaker゛ . Until recently, onlxthose paying to stay on a private island, Tavarua, could ride this wave. Pricesreached $4,000 for a day：nothing for fanatical hedge-funders who wentthere, but deterrent for others. This deprived other businesses in the regionof valuable tourism, and so the Fijian government changed the rules：Cloudbreak was opened to the public in 2010.
In fact, it is possible to improve the supply of waves. Tricks have includedbuilding artificial reefs to create semi-natural waves, or even using wavemachines in pools. But the best solution is to find more sites with goodnatural surf. Another reason why winter is good for surfers, says Mr Jones, isthat it is windy, and wind creates waves. Surfers use sophisticated forecastingto make sure they are in the right at the right time. Mr Jones provides ayear-round daily surf report for the Gower.
Meteorogical and other research is highlighting new regions to explore. Theforecast models show that much of Africa's 16,000-mile (26,000km) coastlineabounds with the right kinds of waves. And at many of those beaches there areno surfers at all. The Black Star Surf Camp, established in 2006 at Busua Beachin Ghana, has grown fast thanks to visitors from America, Europe and Asia. Forthose wanting even more privacy, there are plenty of good waves on the IvoryCoast and in Senegal that anyone willing to explore can enjoy, says Tim Harris,a South African politician and surf explorer. He found the best waves andwarmest welcomes in supposedly dangerous countries that travellers parelyvisit.
Such places stand to do well from the search for the empty wave. A recentsurvey by the Surfrider Foundation, a non-profit ocean-preservation society,explodes the stereotype of the cash-strapped surf bum. It found that typicalbeach users were in their early 30s, well educated and high-spending. Just solong as they don't all come at once.
