Rasta is at it again!

According to this Byron Shire News, in a matter of days professional free-surfer and co-founder of Surfers for Cetaceans, Dave 'Rasta' Rastovich should be wading ashore on Bondi Beach. He and 4 friends left Byron Bay's Main Beach earlier this month to begin a 700km ocean paddle in single-seat krimaran sea kayaks, in order to raise awareness about the plight of whales and the world's oceans.


photo: Five surfer-sailors, high on endorphins and completely exhausted after 10+hours at sea. Credit: Kane Skennar (taken from the blog - see below.)

Each afternoon the friends pull ashore to rest, and are joining local residents in beach cleanups.


photo: Just some of the rubbish, most of it plastic and discarded fishing net and lines, found in a 200m stretch along the frontal dune of a beach in Northern NSW (Sandon River, south of Yamba). (Taken from the blog - see below.)

The trip is called 'Transparentsea.'

The friends joining Rasta for Transparentsea are Byron Bay singer-songwriter, Will Conner, water photographer, Hilton Dawe, free-surfer and activist Chris Del Moro from San Diego, and Surfrider Foundation general manager, Kristy Theissling. Other friends will also join the group for short periods of time. They'll use Kristy's kayak while they are with the group.

The trip was planned to coincide with the return of humpback whales to the Antarctic from their northern breeding grounds.

“Our intentions are that after 36 days and 700km, we'll have helped educate a lot of people on the beauty and majesty of the whales,” Rasta said. “Plus the impact we all have on what is an amazing stretch of coastline and in what ways we might all implement positive change.”

Before leaving from Byron Bay, Rasta spoke to the big crowd that had gathered to wish the friends a safe journey, and asked everyone to unite and support the cause however they could. He explained that their goal is to get information and the message out to the public and everyone who had an interest.

“We need to get out the message to Kevin Rudd and Peter Garrett so they can step up and do the job they said they were going to do and that is go down and fight sanctuary wars in Antarctica,” he said.

“Right now, the only ship going to Antarctica is Sea Shepherd. This whole trip is about escorting the whales down the coast.”

You can follow their trip by reading their amazing blog here or by following Rasta on Twitter, here.

For more info about Rasta's work check out Minds In The Water here and my November 22, 2008 blog post here.

Images from Rasta's visual petition: