Sensing Water: Uncovering Health and Well-Being in the Sea and Surf

Abstract

This article considers how different recreational users engage with and utilize blue spaces as health-enabling. Informed by empirical and participatory fieldwork with surfing and sea swimming groups, we explore embodied and emotional experiences while researching directly within blue space. Given a focus on health and well-being, we identify different dimensions of how surfers and swimmers narrate those experiences while directly immersed in water during a sport/recreational activity. Such questions resonate with geographical thinking around phenomenology, active relational geographies, embodiment, emotion, and sport and leisure practice. We use a broad health promotion or enabling spaces approach to capture different emotional and embodied accounts of immersions in blue space, recognizing that this capture is emergent in and from place.

Coastal Communities, Leisure and Wellbeing: Advancing a Trans-Disciplinary Agenda for Understanding Ocean-Human Relationships in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…Coastal ‘blue spaces’ have been interpreted as “therapeutic landscapes,” providing physical, psychological, social, and spiritual benefits. These benefits develop from both individual and community experiences and relationships [ 58 ] and may arise from immersion or simply visual embrace of the sea [ 37 , 58 ]. This growing body of work has illustrated the different ways in which coastal spaces can foster physical and emotional health and wellbeing across diverse groups, from those who watch, listen, and smell from the shore, to full-immersion activities such as surfing and swimming [ 56 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 ].…”

“…First, in this island nation in the Southern Hemisphere, people's relationships with blue-ecosystems from rivers and lakes to estuaries and oceans, provide multiple and overlapping cultural, spiritual, recreational, health, and ecological, as well as economic, values and benefits [26][27][28][29][30][31]. Second, research has shown that surfing can create strong bonds between people and places, shaping participants' sense of physical, emotional, spiritual, community, social, and cultural wellbeing, impacting people, communities, 'more-than-humans' [32] and oceans [33][34][35][36][37][38]. Third, Aotearoa New Zealand's bi-cultural [23] context, i.e.…”

Perceptions of Teachers in Training on Water Issues and Their Relationship to the SDGs

“…The 2030 Agenda proposes 169 targets to be achieved globally through 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), so that societies are able to respond to the current situation. Sustainable water management is related to various SDGs, among which it is worth highlighting global access to food and the eradication of hunger (SDG 2) [11][12][13]16,28], good health and well-being (SDG 3) [8,9,11,13,15,17,18,22,26,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50], quality education (SDG 4) [32,33,38,39], clean water and sanitation (SDG 6) [7,[13][14][15]27,[42][43][44]46,47,51], sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11) [6,8,12,13,17,[26][27][28]…”

“…They are responsible for teaching during a very important period of influence, such as the early stages of schooling, in which the foundations of many later interests are laid. The change in the beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, habits, and ultimately, responsible behaviours towards the environment, is triggered by education (formal, non-formal and informal), training and information [17][18][19][20][31][32][33][39][40][41]45,50,55,59]. These tools enable the adoption of sustainable development skills and lifestyles, through access to theoretical and practical knowledge that favours the development of three domains: knowing, doing and being (SDG 4).…”

Ocean Literacy and Surfing: Understanding How Interactions in Coastal Ecosystems Inform Blue Space User’s Awareness of the Ocean

“…The qualitative data results serve to elucidate the statistical data and add a deeper understanding of surfer experiences. Delving into this more subjective aspect enables research to build a clearer picture of exactly how surfers see themselves interacting with the sea, which Britton and Foley [ 46 ] describe as “shaping a sense of being and belonging” and important to establish in this novel area.…”