Chilling documentary reveals surfers complicit in gruesome deaths of historically enslaved African-Americans!

"Surfing has a dirty secret... and people are dying."

A terrific new investigative documentary called The Big Sea has laid the boot into surfers and their complicity in the “deadly shadow” which hangs over the wretched “descendants of slaves” in Louisiana in America’s deep south. 

The Big Sea points at the surf industry’s “hidden links to Cancer Alley and the wetsuit world’s toxic addiction to neoprene.” 

Cancer Alley, if you didn’t know, refers to a stretch along the Mississippi River in Louisiana where locals have uncommonly high cancer rates. It’s also home to the the Denka Performance Elastomer plant, the only joint in the US that produces chloroprene, the key ingredient in the production of neoprene and which is also a “likely carcinogen.” 

(It’s why Patagonia and Billabong use Yulex, a natural rubber grown in Arizona.) 

The movie’s message is plain enough, surfers, drunk on greenwashing, ballet on waves while the great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren of slaves die terrible deaths, mostly from liver and lung cancer. 

Surfing is killing it. This $10 billion global industry – built on a clean, green dream – has never been more popular. Surfing has set out its stall as the champion of environmental issues. But surfing has a dirty secret… and people are dying. 

Filmed over three years, in the USA, Australia, France, Spain, the UK and Ireland Lewis Arnold and Chris Nelson have followed the story from the communities of Cancer Alley in Louisiana, through to the sun drenched surf rich beaches of California, to the heart of the surf industry and beyond. This independent investigative documentary is about the power we have as individuals to effect change.

Speaking with surf brands, industry leaders, activists, scientists, oncologists, surfers, cultural commentators and environmental campaigners, The Big Sea asks: “Can you live with the true cost of surfing?”