“When I was a kid living in New York City, I saw the movie Endless Summer and I said, ‘I want to do that!’

And so, for my whole life from that point on, I gravitated to the ocean.

I’ve always had a passion for science and a passion for surfing, and those are two things that I've interwoven in my life. I feel lucky that I found them.

I view myself as a surfer, though I lived a pretty non-surfer life as a scientist. I ran a large research institute in Berkeley that contributed to the Human Genome Project.

I love the fear in surfing, because it’s a fear you can respond to. It’s not low-grade anxiety. I’ve been out there on days when suddenly the swell comes up and it’s top to bottom, and I say, ‘I’m gonna die.’ And I tell myself, ‘Okay, I just gotta be calm.’ And that works. Just say, ‘I gotta be calm.’

Surfing is non-intellectual. It reaches a deeper part of my personality.

And I really love the fact that I have surfer friends of different ages, that I interact with in the ocean. There’s a kid next door; his name is Finn. He’s 14 years old—a big, strong kid and a good surfer. But he doesn’t like going out by himself. I love the fact that he’ll ring the bell, and my wife will say, ‘Hey, it’s Finn,’ and I’ll walk across the dunes with him, and we’ll surf together. And we’re just two surfers—14 years old and 74 years old.

As I’ve gotten older, my appreciation of nature has become deeper. The meaningfulness of being in the ocean has expanded. It used to be just the thrill of charging along the face of a wave, and that’s still great. But looking at the cormorants and watching the pelicans fly—that’s part of the experience now, which maybe was less important earlier on.

I just published a book about Ocean Beach, its creatures and the physical forces that operate. It’s written from my perspective, as someone who’s spent a lifetime walking that stretch of sand, surfcasting from the beach, and bobbing on a board a hundred yards out. It was a real pleasure to write book and learn the stories behind the creatures sand and waves. 

The next book I’m writing is about Darwin’s California. The idea is: what if Darwin, after going to the Galápagos, instead of returning to England, had come to California? How would California have looked to him, and how would he have described some of our fauna and flora? This would have been decades before the Gold Rush and the tens of thousands of people it brought—a time when California was wild.

In the first edition of On the Origin of Species, Darwin talked about how he saw bears swimming in rivers and swatting at things, and he had this vision that maybe bears, over millions of years, adapted to their aquatic environment and progressively evolved into whales and dolphins.

But then, as now, there was a group that believed all life on Earth was created by a divine being. They targeted Darwin’s hypothesis that bears became whales—because that was just ridiculous, right?

At that time, many people thought whales were just another fish. Darwin wrote six editions of the book. In the second edition of On the Origin of Species, he took out the part about bears becoming whales, because that was the one thing they were attacking. Science later showed he was mostly right—but it wasn’t bears, it was hippos that evolved into whales and dolphins.

I love watching the pelicans. I love seeing them plunge-dive. They’re 60 feet up in the air, circling, looking down. Then they see a few fish, and immediately they change orientation and plunge downward like a meteorite hitting the water at 40 miles an hour. They do all kinds of things to soften the impact. They move their neck to one side to protect their trachea and esophagus. They have air sacs that they breathe into, which give them cushioning like an airbag. And then they hit the water with such force it stuns nearby fish. Following the dive, the pelican doesn’t need to catch the fish outright—it just gathers up the partially unconscious fish floating around.

I always lived a pretty regimented life with meetings and schedules, but I never brought a watch into the water. I refused to do that. I love when you’re sitting out there, scanning the horizon, waiting for a set, and it’s random when it comes.

When the waves were good, I would put aside my responsibilities and go to the beach. And I think, for me at least, that was the right approach, versus always keeping my nose to the grindstone. I viewed the ocean and the surf as an important guiding principle for how I lived my life.

I was very lucky that my wife and my son also surfed. It was something we did together. Every weekend, we’d get in the car and drive from Berkeley to Ocean Beach. It wasn’t so much parent and kid in the car—it was more like three surfers going to the beach together.

Years ago, Bob Wise had a surf shop a few blocks from here. For a while, it was the only surf shop in San Francisco. In his shop they had pictures of people in the Double Overhead Association (DOA) surfing big Ocean Beach waves. Membership required being elected in, based on having a photo of you riding a double overhead wave at Ocean Beach.

Mark Renneker once took a picture of me on a big Ocean Beach wave. I saw the photo, and it looked like a giant, giant wave. Later they had a meeting at the old Cliff House—it was just a dozen or so surfers—to decide new members. I’d given talks to thousands of people, but I was more nervous when they put my slide up! Suddenly my wave didn’t look so giant. Mark was running the meeting, and he said, ‘People who think he should get in, raise your hand. People who think he shouldn’t, raise your hand.’ The vote was pretty close, but without counting Mark said, ‘Alright, he’s in.’ So I got elected into the Ocean Beach Double Overhead Association. Soon after, Wise’s surf shop moved, they took down all the pictures, and the Double Overhead Association was disbanded.

One time I paddled out at VFW at dusk, and I got caught in the current. I’d just come back from surfing in Puerto Escondido, Mexico. I was feeling alpha, and I’d bought a brand-new surfboard. The tide was coming in, and suddenly I look up and I’m being swept down the beach. I got swept under the Cliff House and smashed into the rocks. I crawled up the cliff, barely holding on by my fingertips, while my surfboard, connected by my leash, was just going in and out with the waves. It was a green surfboard. Finally, I disconnected it because it was pulling me off the cliff.

I remember there was a Japanese fisherman on the cliff signaling, ‘Come up, come up!’ I was terrified. It was dark when I finally made it up the cliff. The next day, I came back—my surfboard was gone. Since then, I’ve always had a superstition about green boards.

I’m still pretty good at paddling out at Ocean Beach, but my takeoff on anything challenging is iffy. I’m just not as quick jumping to my feet as I used to be, and it saddens me because surfing is such a deep part of my life. I plan many things around when I think the waves will be good. Sometimes I think: maybe if surfing isn’t such a big part of my life in the future, what would I do with myself?

Surfing is something I fear losing. But I don’t think I will. I’ll get out there, and maybe I’ll have to settle for belly-boarding, but I’ll still be in the ocean.

Every day I wake up, and before I look at the news, I check out Surfline to plan my approach to the day and the week.

Surfing is my rhythm.