Sweet Emocean

Osirene in conversation with Emocean magazine cofounder, Mariah Ernst.

The first thing I did when I received my Dirt sticker was slap it on my good old Costco, Jerry Lopez foamie surfboard, a beginner “kook” surfboard that notoriously screams “I don’t know what I’m doing!”

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time in the ocean. I grew up near the coastal waters of San Diego, but my interest in surfing lagged until I got inspired by the Netflix documentary Resurface, on veterans participating in a surf therapy program to help manage and heal their PTSD. While I still can’t really catch a wave, it didn’t take me, a terminally online person, long to get hooked to one unique feature about surfing and aquatic activities in general: it’s a 2+ hour tech-free hobby in nature.

The ocean, however, is unforgiving. It tosses you around like a loose sock. Thus, surfing is a constant dance between effort and relinquishing control. When you’re in the ocean arena, you know who the authority is and getting humbled (almost dying!) happens more often than you’d like. But go often and you’ll find there’s another thing to navigate: surf culture or more accurately surfing’s “bro” culture. If you don’t fit within the most visible aspects of this culture, carving out a niche can be tough. That’s why I was so excited when I found out about print magazine Emocean, which celebrates the personal experiences of all types of surfers with all types of bodies.

Emocean came from the hearts and minds of Thembi Hanify, a graphic designer and art director by trade, and Mariah Ernst, a surf publishing veteran of 15 years, after being disappointed with the current surf media landscape. Billed as an “everyperson surf magazine,” each Emocean edition is themed around an emotion starting with their first edition, JOY, in 2021. Now, five editions later, they’ve arrived at FEAR. What I learned from my late entry into surfing is something the team behind Emocean already understood: the ocean demands you feel.

Below is my conversation with Mariah. You can order the latest Emocean Issue 05 here.

Osirene: “Surfing” the internet and surfing waves are both highly immersive experiences. Surfing demands complete presence due to the risks involved in being in the ocean, but also you simply can’t bring your phone out there. The surf line up is a designated technology-free zone. Can you explain the factors that influenced your decision to create a magazine exclusively in print format?

Mariah Ernst: Pure nostalgia for the printed form and personal desire to create it. And a guess that perhaps other people would feel the same, which they do. I do enjoy providing a screen-free content experience, aka a print magazine. We've gotten feedback that the mag smells great too. But if we went digital, my dream would be to do something inspired by what Dirt is doing.

Osirene: Surfing has many barriers to access. It requires proximity to the beach, purchase of pricey gear like surfboards and wetsuits, as well as logistical challenges of transporting and storing your equipment. On top of all that, the learning curve is incredibly steep. It’s a very inaccessible hobby! What is Emocean’s role in removing some of these barriers?

Mariah Ernst: We publish with new and potential surfers in mind, and we try to platform people making a difference on the ground. For our latest issue, 05, we have Mario Ordoñez-Calderón on the cover and ran a fantastic photo story of him. Mario is the co-founder and executive director of an NGO called Un Mar de Colores, that celebrates diversity and inspires inclusivity by providing free surf therapy, environmental education, and mentorship to children of color and underserved youth in San Diego. He sees surfing as a type of generational knowledge as power as wealth that Un Mar de Colores cultivates in the youth. In 05 we also published a poem by Parul Bansal, "Letter to a New Surfer," a lyrical exploration of oceanic fear, which also provides encouragement and guidance to newer surfers. We do our best to empower people and it’s been a joy. I could definitely do a better job working with and featuring working class voices, which is often on my mind.

Osirene: Surf line ups aren’t always full of friendly faces and the scarcity of waves with one surfer per wave can make the atmosphere on the water extremely competitive and toxic. In the book “My Grandma Surfs Better Than You,” Kim Hamrock offers so many ways to navigate this. How does Emocean shift the conversation away from competition to instead collaboration? How does this shift result in a more abundant wave-sharing experience and the practice of hyping each other up?

Mariah Ernst: You're so right. We publish a "Locals" feature in each issue where we try to steer the culture away from the toxic tradition of locals as the patriarchal and colonialist practice of old straight white guys yelling at people. In issue 01 we highlighted a collective called Benny's Club, dedicated to creating space for POC and queer folks in surfing. In 02 we featured work by Brian Mitchell on locals from São Conrado, one of the best beach breaks in Rio de Janeiro, magically positioned in front of the largest favela in Brazil called Rocinha. So we try to foster mutual understanding, compassion and celebration. I try to humbly infuse some spiritual heart into different aspects of the mag, hopefully that provides some support for a more abundant and hyped experience of the ocean!

Osirene: Ocean knowledge and respect for the waters is an important spiritual part of surf culture. What are some of Emocean’s plans to support ocean education and ocean related projects?

Mariah Ernst: That's another aspect I think about often, and feel like we could do more of! One of my favorite pieces ever was by Margaret Seelie, "Talk to Me," a collection of stories of human's attempts to communicate with aquatic animals from the scientific to the indigenous to the psychedelic. For many surfers, being immersed in the ocean for hours on end does effortlessly induce a love and respect for the ocean and an experience of the divine and we try to highlight that whenever possible, although that varies from place to place and surfer.

Osirene: In surf documentary “Wade in the Water,” wave riding is described as “writing your unique signature on a wave.” Do you considering surfing an art?

Mariah Ernst: That aspect of surfing, surfing as art, has been so brutally commercialized it's hard to get behind it as a blanket concept. I hope each individual surfer can approach surfing as their own personal spiritual practice to realize their own oneness with nature, and their own individual embodied art practice on a wave, something that documentary certainly nourishes. Some surfers especially are performing art on a wave, absolutely, Kelis Kaleopa'a, Mikey February, Steph Gilmore, Luis Fernando, Beau Cram all come to mind–they're some of my personal favorites.