For most, Papua New Guinea is not a well-known destination
for surfing, however people have been surfing here for
hundreds of years. New Ireland has become known to travelling
surfers only over the last 15 years, with the opening
of Nusa Island Retreat who were the first to promote
surfing and cater for travelling surfers in and around
the Kavieng area.
While many international surf destinations rapidly
pass through stages of initial discovery and early years
of limited exposure and exploitation; all too often
the once pristine surf destination quickly becomes over
exposed, over exploited and over crowded. The magic
is lost as the resort operators & tour operators
quickly take control, resulting in overcrowding and
over development with the primary goal becoming profit
generation for the operators.
Fortunately,
PNG has had the foresight to observe and identify the
many shortcomings of over-commercialisation of surf
resources in various other mainstream locations. The
Association, its Clubs, Resource Communities and ultimately
the commercial tour and service operators have necessarily
aligned and agreed to the establishment of Surf Management
Plans in order to promote sustainable growth of surf
tourism in line with agreed expectations and benefits
at each level of the PNG Surf movement.
The Kavieng Surf Club was established in 2003 and developed
the Kavieng Surf Management
Plan, with the Central New Ireland Surf Club following
suit in 2006. Due to the steady growth of surfing in
other areas of New Ireland, a plan of action needed
to be in place to protect surfing both as an industry
and a sport. This saw the founding of the Niu Ailan
Surfriders Alliance (NASA) in 2007, which was tasked
to promote sustainable development of surfing in all
of New Ireland - primarily to develop, manage and oversee
Surf Management Plans.
The
PNG Surf Management Plan structure, and in particular
the Niu Ailan Surfriders Alliance (NASA) Management
Plans have been specifically developed with the primary
goal of managing visiting surfer numbers in order to
ensure that the PNG surf experience remains unique and
memorable for those fortunate enough to experience it,
today and into the future. The management plans also
undertake to ensure direct benefits to surf area communities
through the equitable distribution of surf fees collected
from visiting surfers under the management plans.
The PNG experience is totally unique in world surfing.
The Management Plan structure is designed to keep it
that way.
The Niu Ailan Surfriders Alliance (NASA) is an Affiliated
Member of the Surfing Association of Papua New Guinea
, and embodies the Kavieng Surf Club and the Central
New Ireland Surf Club.
Papua New Guinea lies to the north of Australia in
the South West Pacific. New Ireland is north east of
mainland PNG. The Provincial capital, Kavieng, is located
at the northern tip of the long and narrow island of
New Ireland, just 2 degrees south of the equator. The
area takes advantage of the Northern Hemisphere swells
coming from the northwest to northeast directions. During
this period the wind is generally light and variable,
although predominately from the N/NW. The surf consistently
ranges from 3-4ft; bigger swells see it at 5-6ft.
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