I just try my best to not only experience the best waves around the world, but also

find interesting ways to use science to help manage or protect them and be a better

steward of those faces.

I just want to clean up after I party pretty much, that's why I surf and do coral science.

It's Cliff Caponeau, a native Hawaiian from Hilo, Hawaii.

Cliff doesn't just surf and do science.

He's a professional surfer with a PhD in chemistry.

Here in Hawaii from a young age we're so intimately connected to our natural environment, and

in my family we consider ourselves very much ocean people, and I would say that surfing

for me in my life was given to me as a gift.

We treat surfing in that sense, we're being a part of the ocean, and even the way we

fish and the way we dive and the way we surf, it's it's linear.

I very much have adopted a surfing as my way to connect with my family lineage and also

connect with the natural world here.

And that connection that Cliff feels to the water, it's also changed the way he thinks

about his place in the world.

By being in the ocean you're able to connect to so many different humans and other species

on the planet.

I remember being in Southern California one time when the red tide arrived, and the

bioluminescence was emitting in the nighttime.

And I remember surfing and catching the wave, I remember taking off and seeing just the

water light up as I was paddling for the wave, and it seemed like it was like fireworks

...