Maya Gabeira, even surfing can save the ocean

“The ocean is my home. It’s magical and powerful. I ride its waves and I’m happy if with my surfboard I can help save it.” Maya Gabeira is the queen of the oceans: 36 years old, Brazilian by birth and Portuguese by adoption. She star of Big Wave Surfed, the sport reserved for surfers who face giant waves. She holds the world record for the highest wave surfed by a woman. She, a dot tied to a board, in 2020 managed to tame a mountain of water over 22 meters high, obtaining the Biggest Wave World 2020.

Athlete known for her talent and courage, Maya Gabeira has decided to intertwine her life with conservation by accepting to become the Unesco Ocean and Youth Champion. At the forefront of mobilizing the new generations by organizing, among others, sustainability summits. She has been chosen as the main spokesperson and face of GenOcean the new Unesco campaign to stimulate lifestyle changes among boys and girls. Where will he get inspiration from? From the waves and the wind.

“I am very concerned about the many challenges related to the ocean, from pollution to loss of marine biodiversity. What motivates me in my role as Unesco Ocean and Youth Champion is the opportunity to see it through a multiplicity of perspectives. L “Unesco acts to safeguard biodiversity, supports scientific research and the cultural values ​​of the ocean. It is an honor for me to make its action known”, she explained, accepting to become Ambassador. And Unesco are convinced that your story and your skills will be able to mobilize young people in this global challenge. “I’d like to be a source of courage and perseverance for the kids,” Gabeira told al Guardian.

Challenges certainly don’t scare her. She is a survivor. She has been surfing since she was 14 on the beach in Rio de Janeiro. Talent, skill and passion can be seen immediately. At 15 she is in Australia and at 17 in Hawaii. Always looking for the perfect wave. In 2007 he won the Big Waves Award, an award that remained with him also in the following eight years. In 2008 she was the first woman to surf the waves of Alaska with compatriot Carlos Bunge, born in 1967. And it will be him in 2013 in Nazarè, in that fishing village in Portugal that will later become her home, to save them the life. During a workout, 26-year-old Maya tries to tackle a giant wave, but she is thrown off her board and breaks her ankle. She passes out and is completely at the mercy of the waves. Carlos, who was following her, risks her life to snatch her from that vortex and bring her back to shore, where she is revived. Maya knows it’s an extreme sport for her, and she doesn’t give up. She will try again to ride that perfect wave again in Nazarè, in that part of the Atlantic Ocean that washes Portuguese Extremadura and seven years later she is crowned as one of the best big wave surfers in the world. It takes courage, not just training and tenacity in a sport considered only for men up to a few years ago, where women continue to be greatly outnumbered.

But she has become an example for many girls who want to take up the sport of giant waves, because Maya beat a man in Nazarè that day. Few believed it and now her feat has been told in a documentary entitled Maya and the Wave. Made in the United States, it was presented at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. Here Gabeira talks about her beginnings, her work riding the waves, the satisfactions that the ocean gave her, but also the struggles she had to undertake to be taken seriously in a sport dominated by men. A battle, that of gender equality in surfing – especially what is practiced on big waves – which she has undertaken with her colleagues. All together they scored a victory. The World Surg League has indeed announced that it has awarded equal pay to women and men for all professional competitions. A result defined by the “historic” athletes.

“The strongest, most powerful and most dangerous creature on earth is a focused woman.”

But it’s his whole life that looks like a novel. His father Fernando Gabeira, a family of Lebanese origins, is a former revolutionary. He fought the Brazilian dictatorship with the “October 8” movement, after prison and exile, he founded the Green Party. Today he moves between politics and journalism and is an author of books. Mother Yame Reis is a famous stylist, sister Tami a psychologist. Many lives in a family, many challenges that formed part of Maya Gabeira’s training educated in a German school in Rio. But to become her champion she had to tame fear and discrimination before the giants of the sea. And she did it.

Now the super woman of surfing who beats the men is an inspiration for many girls and boys who are not only committed to surfing, but to promote positive action to save the ocean. And if she says that the ocean with all the lessons it taught her was “her university”, she revealed that she draws inspiration from Sylvia Earle the American oceanographer, known for being the first woman to head the National Oceanic and United States Atmospheric Administration. The public tribute arrived on 8 March. “To me, Earle is an inspirational pioneer and a leader for ocean advocacy with hope and enthusiasm,” she explained at an Ocean Decade Convertions event organized by Unesco.

There is certainly no shortage of ideas in Gabeira to be implemented by the end of the Ocean Decade. “Since the sea provides us with half of the oxygen we have on the planet, keeping it healthy is a necessity for our survival. So I’m thinking of the creation of 30% of marine protected areas. It will be my first goal”, he explained in the same occasion the champion who was keen to underline how it is necessary, today more than ever, to rely on scientists.

“To address every aspect of ocean conservation, the decisions to make about coping with the climate change crisis and the food crisis, we need to be guided by science. So it’s time to listen to what science tells us and change the way we live. live to find harmony between us and the sea. Us and nature as a whole”.

Clear words that leave no room for doubt: each initiative will be agreed upon and will take place with the involvement of experts.

If his home is in Nazarè, the capital of giant waves north of Lisbon, the most coveted place in the world for the extreme discipline of surfing, Gabeira divides his life between Rio de ‘Janeiro and Los Angeles. She is active on social media, she shares not only sporting events on her Instagram profile, but also her activism for the environment. Like the one in favor of Oceana, the non-profit organization engaged in campaigns in favor of biodiversity in the oceans. She has just returned from a trip to Patagonia where she participated together with the Oceana team in meetings with local institutions to talk about climate change, the loss of biodiversity, the food crisis linked to the exploitation of the oceans. From intensive fishing to ocean acidification. But how to change? Starting with the new generations precisely. Come on kids.

Maya and the Beast is a picture book for young readers. The “beast” is a wave that can reach the height of a seven-story building and crashes into the coast with such force that the windows of the village all vibrate.

People are afraid of this huge wave and Maya, a little girl who suffers from asthma, knows she shouldn’t go near the beast. Instead, she decides to learn to ride the big waves trying to overcome not only her fears, but also the prejudices of people who believe she does not have the same physical abilities as her male peers. Maya Gabeira is the author and she wrote the book during the pandemic when she couldn’t train.

Inspired by her life, she explained, which can help little girls face their fears and fight gender stereotypes in sports and love the ocean. Yes, because now after the “beast” arrives at the bookstore Maya in The Sea, a book with many illustrations. It is the sequel to the story. There are so many images of the ocean and the animals that live there, foundations of balance and marine biodiversity that need to be saved. Before it’s too late. The best surfers? “It’s the dolphins”, says the great athlete who always looks for where the wind is blowing and for the perfect wave. But the special wave, the champion who lived twice tells us, is that of respect for the sea.