Terry Sherry

Surf conservation partnerships

I connect the surf industry with the work of protecting the ocean it depends on.

What I do

Surf parks, brands, and coastal communities all have a stake in healthy coastlines, and most of them want to help. My work is building the partnerships that turn that goodwill into something real: sponsorships, campaigns, and events that fund and advance ocean conservation.

I currently consult to Conservation International's Surf Conservation Partnership, and I work across the surf park development industry, where a new generation of operators is deciding right now what kind of environmental commitment gets built in from the start.

A campaign I helped drive

Surf for the Ocean brought the surf community to the Huntington Beach pier to raise money and awareness for ocean conservation. I helped drive it from concept to sand: three events delivered end to end, municipal permitting, insurance and certificates, vendor sourcing and procurement, creative production, and the sponsor conversations that put boards, wetsuits and a booth on the beach at no cost to the campaign, plus gifts sourced from my own network.

Surf for the Ocean at the Huntington Beach pier: the crew with sponsored boards under the event canopy

Huntington Beach pier, June 2026. Boards, wetsuits and the booth all donated.

Read the longer story →

The bigger programme

I'm part of the Surf Conservation Partnership

Conservation International runs it, and the scale of the opportunity is the reason I gave up my week nights for it. Surf breaks are not just waves. They sit on top of some of the most carbon-rich, biodiverse coastal ecosystems on the planet, and almost nobody was protecting them as a category until this programme existed.

100Surf Protected Areas targeted worldwide by 2030
300+Surf breaks those areas would protect
25%Of the world's ~4,000 mapped surf breaks sit within 5km of a Key Biodiversity Area
950MMetric tons of carbon stored in the coastal ecosystems around surf breaks

Programme figures published by Conservation International at conservation.org/projects/surf-conservation. My role is partnerships, events and industry relationships, not science.

Background

Before conservation work I spent two decades in international trade, founding 1 World Sarongs and sourcing directly from artisan communities in Indonesia and Thailand. Same instinct, different vehicle: build the relationship first, and make sure the people at the far end of it are better off.

I surf, I practice yoga, and I live three miles from the pier where most of this gets organized.