Does anyone know how many activer surfers there are worldwide?

Question

I'm trying to find out how many active surfers worldwide and how many there are in Australia and Japan. Can you also give me the source of where you got the data?

thanks.

Answer 1

There is an industry trade group called SIMA (Surf Industry Manufacturer's Association) that tracks this kind of info in the US but I am not sure if the data is available world wide.  The latest SIMA report estimated that there are approx 2.5 million surfers (including spongers) in the US.

I've heard that something like 60% of the population of Australia consider themselves to be surfers so you could make a guess from there.

Answer 2

Millions.  Too many to count.  

Also, the term "surfer" is such a broad generalization, even if you did get a statistic, you'd have no way of proving or even defining it.  

Is an active surfer someone who goes out every day for 2 hours?  What if you only go out for one hour every day?  What if you go out every other day for 3 hours?  What if you only surf on the weekends?  How about 4 times a month?  What if you only surf in the Summer?  What if you mostly body board, but also surf sometimes?  Does body surfing count?  What about kite surfing?  Wind surfing?  How would you define an active surfer???

I do know there are millions!!!  At the beach I go to, on a crowded summer weekend day, there will be about 200 people in the water at one time (spread out from the pier to the cliffs).  I'd guess 600+ people surf at my 1/2 mile long beach on a crowded summer day.  Now, think of how many beaches there are, how many MILES of coastline there are around the world, how many people surf those waves.  It's just too many to count!

Answer 3

Surfer's Village http://www.surfersvillage.com is an excellent example of how far reaching the community is but we are very close knit. You could look at professional surfers and count them pretty easily by events and competitors, but there's no way to keep track of all the amateurs.

There are sites that will let you create your own surveys for free. You could always distribute it via MySpace and join the friends list of all major surf brands and organizations.