Sensing Water: Uncovering Health and Well-Being in the Sea and Surf

Introduction

This article considers the ways in which different recreational users engage with and utilize blue spaces as health-enabling (Duff, 2011). Informed by empirical and participatory fieldwork with surfing and sea swimming groups, we compare and contrast embodied and emotional experiences encountered while researching directly within blue space that support human health and flourishing. Within that overall focus on uncovering health and well-being for surfers and swimmers, the ultimate aim is to explore different dimensions of how this is narrated by people who are directly immersed in water during a leisure sport/recreational activity (Wheaton et al., 2017). Such questions resonate with recent and older geographical thinking around phenomenology, relational geographies, embodiment, emotion, and sport and leisure practice (Andrews, 2016; Fullagar, 2019). In addition, we use a broad health promotion or enabling spaces approach to capture different emotional and embodied accounts of immersions in blue space, equally recognizing how this capture is emergent in and from place (Bell, Foley, et al., 2018).

In developing the topic, we explore this both from our own experiences as researchers and from other reflections from the edge of land and sea (Ryan, 2012). As Andrews (2016) suggests, how we capture a sense of what he terms “movement-space” in relation to sports geographies has equal resonance in how people recount their health and well-being within similar places and spaces (Bell, Leyshon, et al., 2018). We also align with a view of health and well-being that is focused partially on illness, but more fully on an enabling view of well-being, that incorporates elements of both subjective and psychological well-being (Caddick et al., 2015). Our research documents this by drawing on different aspects of embodiment and emotion, to research how swimmers and surfers describe those dimensions in their encounters with the sea (Bell, Foley, et al., 2018). The encounters emphasize how blue space both informs and produces knowledge that is fluid, dynamic, and influenced by temporal cycles of change, for example, diurnal, seasonal, lunar/tidal, climatic, and life-course. This in turn emphasizes how place shapes the parallel fluid and cyclical social practices of surfing, swimming, and being in the sea (Bell, Foley, et al., 2018) to better understand the swell and calm of our own health and well-being. In particular, it is the specifically immersive nature of surfing and swimming that we focus on to see how blue space influences, shapes, and produces that well-being and how best to capture the articulation of those experiences (Anderson & Peters, 2014; Britton, 2018; Brown & Humberstone, 2015; Brown & Peters, 2018; Evers, 2015; Foley, 2015; Strandvad, 2018; Straughan, 2012; Throsby, 2013, 2015). Ultimately, what we propose is the idea of bodies as active subjects sensing place or, more broadly, as intimate sensors that have specifically affective capacities and potentials that in turn enable both physical and emotional health (Atkinson, 2019; Britton, 2019; Brown, 2019).

Literature Review

There is growing interest in how “blue space” or water environments operate as a therapeutic medium and how immersion in water influences our sense of well-being and self-connection. As part of a wider “blue turn” in human geography, specific blue practices like surfing and swimming have emerged as important topics of research (Britton, 2019; Evers, 2015; Foley, Kearns, et al., 2019; Wheaton et al., 2017). Within wider writing on the sea, coasts, and the oceans and more specific research on health at the coast, surfing and swimming differ in having quite specifically immersive components (Anderson & Peters, 2014; Brown & Humberstone, 2015). However, there has been limited focus on how exactly that immersion works and the different elements within that immersion that shape our health and well-being. We also argue that an exploration of immersion is linked to theoretical arguments that shift from a static “being” to a more mobile and contingent “doing-in-the-world” perspective (Andrews, 2016; Andrews et al., 2014). Given that both activities require immersion in water, we also emphasize the role of the sea as shaping that immersion though its own very powerful non-human agency, to create an explicit “becoming” environment. Both swimming and surfing take place in coastal and tidal waters that are complex, unpredictable, and that contain perspectives and orientations to the world that are both vertical and horizontal, or in the tumble of a wave or a dive, both at the same time (Britton, 2018). In such settings, the capturing of the experience of place is constantly changing; we are also in a sense captives of place, giving over a certain embodied grounding to floating free and being at the mercy of mobile, more-than-human environments, currents, and flows (Andrews, 2016; Duff, 2011). Our research is interested in how bodies and feelings mediate and inform practice; how evaluations make sense of why such immersions matter; and how and why material dimensions of place shape specific and immediate immersive encounters (Britton, 2019). This shift to a form of in situ relational thinking is emerging in the literature, which is made possible by recent technological advances that open up access to record in-the-moment feelings and actions (Bell et al., 2017; Evers, 2015; lisahunter, 2018).

There is an increasing scholarship about surfing, in particular, that represents it as a watery, sensory, and relational experience (Anderson, 2013; Britton, 2018, 2019; Evers, 2015; lisahunter, 2018; Olive, 2015; Wheaton, 2013). Furthermore, there is growing interest in how surfing can be used as a therapeutic and transformative medium and practice (Britton, 2018; Caddick et al., 2015; Wheaton et al., 2017). A systematic review identified surfing as the most frequently studied blue space therapeutic intervention in the literature (Britton, Kindermann, et al., 2018). Some identified health benefits were linked to the challenging nature of surfing: different coasts, winds, currents, and seasons requiring constant adaptation. Although the mechanisms of how surf therapy contributes to well-being are not yet fully understood, the literature does suggest that learning to surf in a group context can help enhance a sense of belonging and identity through shared experiences in the surf (Godfrey et al., 2015; Hignett et al., 2017). In addition and central to any discussion of health and well-being is the importance of immersion in producing a sense of “respite” from everyday and acquired anxieties and disabilities (Marshall et al., 2019; Wheaton et al., 2017). Caddick et al. (2015) document this specifically with a group of former combatants dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), who are engaged in surfing programs. In addition, Wheaton et al.’s (2017) review identified strongly positive developmental and health/well-being aspects of surfing programs associated with the capacity-building potential of lifestyle sports that can challenge more instrumental and structured sports programs. Yet, they and others note that such surfing sites and experiences are also contested (Lazarow & Olive, 2017). For example, a separate U.K. study of youths with social behavioral problems noted the social norms that can persist around watersports and surfing with youth from lower income backgrounds feeling socially and culturally excluded (Hignett et al., 2017). Although limited, studies are emerging that go beyond the action of surfing and point to the particular nature or quality of our interactions with water and waves (lisahunter, 2018). The establishment of the International Surf Therapy Organization (ISTO) in 2017 was largely in response to a growing demand for evidence-based interventions in the sea to better understand the health-promoting mechanisms and qualities of surfing, providing further evidence for the therapeutic potential of the sea.

Similarly, research on swimming, especially linked to a wider relational health, is still under-developed. Much of the research has grounding in sport and leisure geographies, with a focus on physiology and psychology, including articles on performance, endurance, and specific bodily changes when exposed to cold water (Dugué & Leppänen, 2010). Within a recent systematic review of therapeutic blue space interventions, swimming was all but absent, suggesting a mismatch between its established popularity and current research approaches (Britton, Kindermann, et al., 2018). A second strand has a more environmental health component (equally relevant to surfers), around water quality and health risks associated with exposure to polluted waters, indoor and outdoor, for leisure users (Foley, 2015; Leonard et al., 2018; Ward, 2017, 2017) and has used oral history research with Irish coastal swimmers to uncover the different ways older swimmers use sea swimming as a lifelong resource to manage physical and mental health. In the United Kingdom, recent research has explored specific trends such as “wild swimming” and informal swimming communities to propose renewed attention to the role of blue nature to health and well-being (Atkinson, 2019; Denton, 2018). As Atkinson (2019, p. 193) notes, we need to pay attention to immersion in water as a medium not given for human life but one where our senses become heightened. This is reflected in other research that, while not directly focused on swimming, explores more embodied and kinesthetic understandings of how well-being emerges from everyday sport and leisure practices (lisahunter, 2018; Spinney, 2015; Wheaton et al., 2017). Both Spinney and lisahunter talk explicitly about the immediately sensed and in-the-moment experience of cycling and surfing, respectively, that helps make sense, through the senses, of a physically active well-being practice in place, something also emerging slowly in swimming research (Denton, 2018; Foley, 2017).

The article also mines other broad strands of health and well-being literature. First, a strong experimental evidence base for the value of natural spaces is found in health promotion and environmental psychology work on attention restoration, stress reduction, and nature connection (Frumkin, 2003; Hartig, 2003; Hartig et al., 2014; Korpela et al., 2008; White et al., 2010). Typically working in controlled environments using measurable instruments, the research identifies numeric evidence for the value of being present and active in natural blue spaces, especially in relation to leisure practices (Bell et al., 2017; Gidlow et al., 2016; Korpela et al., 2014). Harri (2018) identifies nature and social disconnect as two of seven “lost connections” in society today; any initiatives that promote an increased and autonomous use of the sea as a health-enabling resource should be encouraged. Two of the surfing/swimming programs evaluated in this article also draw on some instrumental approaches though these will be reported elsewhere as part of the findings of the NEAR-Health project (Britton et al., 2020; NEAR Health, 2020).

As a second strand, health/medical geographers are increasingly exploring aspects of flow, therapeutic accretion, and affect/emotion, central to recent work on therapeutic landscapes (Bell et al., 2018). Parallel work explores specific links between health and blue space, with an explicit focus on “health at the coast” (Kearns & Collins, 2012; Wheeler et al., 2012). A recent Irish study identified proximity to, and a view of the sea, as being associated with reduced depression scores in older adults (Dempsey et al., 2018). As Wheaton et al. (2017) note, the idea of respite also links strongly to the idea of ebb/flow, both in relation to the varying well-being states that force us to seek respite and also the specific role of respite as time out/away from everyday stresses and strains. In addition, there is a cyclical component common to the settings for much of this blue space work, containing both human (aches and pains, chronic conditions, rehabilitation) and non-human (tide, wave, wind, sand) elements. Overall, the literature suggests the need to develop sensory narratives for blue space research that investigates the coming together of bodies, emotions, and blue space practices in the fluid environment of the sea. Linked to this, critical self-reflections and accounts on experiences and experiments with various approaches, tools and technologies, including in situ methodologies like geo-narratives or swim-alongs, are increasingly used (Bell et al., 2017; Denton, 2018). These are very directly linked to the immediacy of bodies and minds in place and how these in turn capture, and perhaps equally importantly, store health and well-being within specific blue settings.

How health and well-being outcomes emerge in blue space are, in our research, framed around a number of sub-themes that emerge from the literature. We understand health as multidimensional. Health and well-being in the context of this article are framed by how swimmers and surfers perceive feeling healthy, being well, and experiencing a sense of well-being. The themes around well-being that emerged in this study largely focus on emotional well-being, how people feel in place, as well as a sense of personal growth and meaningfulness (Pritchard et al., 2019). A relational understanding of well-being is also emphasized (White et al., 2010) which acknowledges the influence of our relationship with place on our well-being. That said, physical aspects of health and wellness (e.g., recovery from injury, increased immunity) also emerge in how people describe their experiences of immersion. In considering sensing bodies, surfing and swimming are shared practices that tease out wellness benefits through a very direct engagement in blue space that additionally consider relationships between risk and safety. In relation to sensing emotions, specifically narrated benefits for mental health emerge through both individual and communal practices that have additional intergenerational components. Finally, in considering the places in which swimming and surfing are practiced, different material and more-than-human dimensions directly shape relational health and well-being outcomes.

Method and Settings

We present comparative empirical sensory, ethnographic, and embodied accounts (Pink, 2015) drawn from specific research projects both authors have carried out with surfers (E.B.) and swimmers (E.B., R.F.). This research included attuned work with a range of different user groups and individuals, including old and young people with disabilities and impairments, to uncover unique yet also typical accounts and representations. In this article, our approach combined in situ ethnographic participation with in-depth narrative interviews with a mix of participants including swimmers, surfers, parents, and instructors.

In situ methodologies included swim-along, informal and group interviews, observant participation, field diaries, and embodiment practices including sensory and body mapping with participants. Go-along or swim/surf-along interviews were used to allow for closer insights and for experiences to be described and contextualized in participant’s own words as sensations arose in place. Bell refers to this style of interviewing as “emplaced interviews” (Bell, Hollenbeck, et al., 2019, p. 5). We use the term “observant participation” (Smith, 2019, p. 5) in contrast to participant observation as both authors immersed themselves in place over time, actively engaging in swimming and surfing activities. As Smith (2019) points out, methodological approaches where researchers are both observer and participant are not without issues. However, they allowed for sensitivity and valuable insights into how participants sense place, especially haptic elements (Bell et al., 2018; Bell, Leyshon, & Phoenix, 2019; Smith, 2019), as well as helping to build rapport and a temporal understanding of place effects.

In choosing to use such methodologies, we argue that these are effective approaches to uncover differential accounts around how people feel in place or build up to and wind down from a swim or surf; how the acts of immersion relate to other parts of their lives; as well as inform and shape their health and well-being. These are also linked to bodies, minds, and technologies in place and how these are directly involved in capturing health and well-being within specific blue settings; working around haptic elements, senses, body parts, different tools and technologies (e.g., wetsuits, surfboards, and swim buoys), and more elusive and slippery experiences and felt responses. In-depth inductive analyses applied multiple lenses—relational, temporal, sensory, and spatial—to situate participants’ immersive experiences in diverse settings and contexts (e.g., material, emotional, social, and environmental). In the process themes emerged that suggest that being in water requires us to consider how a sensory response through our bodies and emotions and within specific place materialities, including the more-than-human, can provide a useful foundation for health and well-being (DeLyser et al., 2010).

From a methodological learning perspective, although engaging with the sea cannot be easily or neatly captured (lisahunter, 2018), the active and in situ nature of the project was helpful in critically considering how immersive the work could really be. The study incorporated methods attuned to context across place, time, and social practice (lisahunter & emerald, 2016). It also used a narrative approach with an emphasis on sensory/embodied experiences backed up by field observation. It highlighted the importance of the role of reflexivity within methodological choices and “how much of the rich texture of life is omitted from the static measurement of wellbeing” (Smith, 2019, p. 10). It has also been the case that such “insider” research styles are already prevalent in surfing and swimming work (Britton, 2019; Evers, 2015; lisahunter, 2018; Wheaton et al., 2017). The longitudinal aspect of the surf program showed up the value of field notes. Learning what did and did not work in uncontrollable near-oceanic locations was an important element of geographical work and provided useful evidence to better understand how aspects of waves and weather shaped how blue space data could be or was gathered, within which flexible contingent and work-around responses proved both necessary and educationally useful.

Findings: Immersion as a Route to Wellness

This section reports on the empirical findings to explore the relational processes and place connections that drove how both the authors and participants experienced their immersion in natural blue space. From the accounts, a sense of place emerged that was fluid and dynamic, influenced by biosocial cycles of change that shaped different senses of self and well-being, or “being-ness.” What emerged were both the slow cyclical movement of the seasons and the sudden effect of rain, the change in wind direction or speed, or the reappearance of the sun from behind a cloud. Preference for place was influenced by these more-than-human relationships, especially so in the decision-making and choice of blue space encounter for surfers and swimmers (Bell et al., 2018). Despite this, there has been a surprising lack of inclusion of natural ephemera, weather conditions, or elemental states in blue space studies (Bell, Leyshon, & Phoenix, 2019b; Britton, Kindermann, et al., 2018; lisahunter, 2018). This is just one example, a background hum if you like, of the immersive thinking that shaped our work. The remainder of this section is organized around three broad themes, reflecting the literature and methodologies that were central to our explorations of immersion and sensing bodies.

Embodiment was central to that articulation, representative of a set of feeling bodies captured by place. Those sensing bodies reflected aspects of breath, touch, and the very physical requirements of movement required in surfing and swimming and provided accounts of relational selves captured in place and through the developing “know-how” of practical and tacit knowledge and skills (Brown, 2019). They also reflected the equally real and physical dimensions of safety and risk, with key aspects of the work aligned with promoting and enabling safe and healthy blue space practice. A second section focuses on sensing emotions and how feeling, emotions, and mental health were identified as a direct and sometime indirect benefit of immersive practice. These ranged from an emphasis on recovery and respite but also other aspects of strengthening and enhanced self-esteem. A final section on sensing place materialities focused on the material and more than human dimensions of surfing/swimming place to provide an account of how place capture occurred, but equally how immersion was made possible through the social environment, technologies, and supportive others. Such place materialities, including the weather effects/affects noted above, were important features of repeat engagements within both the programmatic and open parts of the research. While there are very individual accounts of the health and well-being benefits, direct and oblique, we would argue that there are considerable and surprising commonalities arising out of those accounts. The value of swimming and surfing emerges from both physical activity and mental relaxation consistent with wider green/blue space accounts of nature engagements (Bell et al., 2017). Hearing these recounted “from the water” did, however, deepen those understandings and provide some new knowledge on exactly how specific benefits arose for both individuals and groups within specific blue spaces.

Discussion

The research exemplified how the idea of an immersive place capture worked in multiple ways; not always fixed or exclusive, but through explicit moments of connection with self, others, and the non-human. In addition, the centrality of being in-the-body in-place was productive of a very specific type of well-being and empowerment. Such moments of connections were important to people who would have felt otherwise disconnected, yet both the swimming and surfing programs equally acted as forms of informal support, operating at both individual and communal levels. Similar to Throsby (2013, p. 15), for many sea swimmers immersion was an, “opportunity to have a sense of identity detached from others.” While immersed in the water, they were no longer identified by their life circumstances: bereaved, divorced, unemployed, or a stay-at-home parent whose children had left home. While the shared identity of the group and separation from everyday life created a sense of belonging and being at these sites of immersion, it should be noted that the separation between terrestrial and aquatic experiences of place is porous/permeable with “spillover effects” evident in other aspects of life (Britton, 2019):

It also strips away … when you take away the clothes that they wear and the jobs that they have, they’re all there together in that shared experience so it doesn’t really matter what you do or where you come from, you still have to face that [fear] and you face that together. (Founder & swim instructor, 2018)

As another key dimension of place capture associated with surfing/swimming at the coast, the idea of transformation was important. In letting the surfer/swimmer be captured into the literal control of the sea, they had to employ their own capacities, physical and mental; it became essential to transform to survive and enjoy the experience. It has not been surprising to see long-distance swimming emerge as a new sport in which the stretching of human endurance and the transformative capacities of the body are regularly tested out. Swimming and surfing emerged from the research as transformative practices, especially in relation to bodies without full capacities, both physical and mental. A mother whose son was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and is struggling to find support in the education and health care system explained how, “Surfing is where he feels most himself.”

Equally, while the projects emphasized positive dimensions of sea swimming and surfing, inherent all through was a sense of other more contested and negative outcomes, described by Conradson (2005) as “differential imbrications” in generally therapeutic settings. As Throsby (2015, p. 159) notes, “The sea is commonly represented as a place of risk and danger.” Similarly, we rarely experience the sea through ourselves alone and there are other material elements, beachside signs, notice boards, and media representations that remind us about risky behaviors and safety-first practices in the water. These tap more fully into discussion around behaviors at the beach, wherein Walton and Shaw (2017) in a study of Australian beach behaviors recognize a tension in what people should and want to do, reflecting how psychotherapeutic geographies and different dimensions of control, shape that encounter, including more-than-human encounters with dangerous swells, jagged rocks and risky marine life (Gibbs & Warren, 2015). Developing thinking around control and freedom, in particular the need to behave responsibly and the dignity of risk, points to some interesting future debates. Those learned aspects of water connection can move through generations, and Britton (2019, p. 99) refers to this intergenerational water connection as “blue heritage.” However, the same is true for negative experiences and several parents of children participating in the surf therapy program commented that they did not like the sea. One mother linked her inability to swim to a negative experience in her childhood but she didn’t want her son to have her fear so during her pregnancy, she went to the swimming pool and he’s always loved the water. In this way, there is a relational immersion that is always shaped by individualized responses and experiences, often negative, but which some of the shared programs we describe here help to mitigate and overcome.

In extending the impact of being captured in and by the water, this seemed to be a significant and valuable outcome of the immersion leading to an improved “ethic of care around water” and recognition of the interconnection between a healthy environment and human health (Bell et al., 2018; Wyles et al., 2017). Practitioners and participants linked increased awareness of the environment with their level of immersion, “with sea swimming, we have a lot more people aware of the environment because you’re actually in it.” Immersion influenced perspective, emphasizing a visible and literal embodied and emotional entanglement with the ocean environment, explicitly mediated through this watery world (Britton, 2019). Such interconnections were difficult to ignore when one’s swimsuit becomes full of plastic, “We were on a swim trek in Greece last year and we saw more plastic than fish. It was in our togs, everywhere” (Swimmer, female, 2017). With the growing popularity of blue space activities such as sea swimming and surfing, and the recent trend in warmer summers, more visitors are drawn to the coast for their leisure and recreation. This influx of visitors, many with a less developed sense of place care, causes tensions with resident groups who have an attachment to place through immersion:

The people that use it all the time are really good, and then they get pissed off. You can’t deny someone, it’s free space but how do you control it so that people pick up their own rubbish? (Swim instructor, 2018)

Summary

This paper has documented and developed the idea of positive health and well-being immersions in blue space, as seen through a series of empirical interventions with different groups of Irish swimmers and surfers. The research additionally explored how best to capture the effects/affects of blue place/space for health and well-being. These are contested spaces with contested and variable outcomes though in general the benefits seemed clear and tallied with wider research findings on their value as spaces of enhanced physical activity, stress reduction, attention-restoration and transformation (Britton, 2018). Drawing together different sensory accounts from similar settings by different users and practitioners did lead us to what we felt was a deeper and sometimes surprising understanding of a shared space. It allowed us to account for and capture, in all its complexity and experiential nuance, how swimming and surfing places, in a perversely mobile way, could “affix” a therapeutic salve to sometimes exhausted and wounded bodies. A specifically sensory focus identified that sometimes being captured meant being in effect, enraptured, in the “flow” moment that allowed surfers/swimmers to forget other worries and stresses and reconnect to their own bodies and selves. In a risk-averse society, Phoenix and Orr’s (2014) work on joy/pleasure suggests it would be useful to see place capture as an exploration of “place rapture” and the potential value of meaningfully evaluating spaces of joy and their everyday importance. At the heart of the voices of the swimmers and surfers, these positive aspects mattered. A parallel outcome, linked to both physical and a mental well-being benefits, identified that surfers and swimmers both valued the sometimes challenging developmental and enskilment aspects of the work that gave them additional self-esteem and confidence that in turn allowed them uncover hidden and unknown strengths within themselves (Denton, 2018). In addition, those skills provide a situated resilience in the water: several parents commented on their own fear of water and the desire to transmit a sense of “non-fear” to their children.

A surprising and unexpected finding was the differential ways in which an enhanced place care emerged from surfers and swimmers experiences and actions; immersion produced very different insights than simply viewing or floating and also produced a more holistic understanding of what health and well-being meant to the respondents (Merchant, 2016). There is also a useful link here around the term “bond” and the idea of therapeutic accretion, a deeply restorative connection to place that gradually builds-up through encounters over the course of a lifetime (Foley, 2017). While Foley’s work emphasized lifelong connections to place, it was striking how quickly bonds and friendships formed across all the groups, both young and old and how that bond became a form of glue that held things together and hinted at a capacity to strengthen over time. While one might correctly argue that there were also contested cleansing/shedding aspect as well in those accounts (Adams, 2017), one might counter by suggesting the analogy of a seed pearl, regularly cleansed but with a rich and valuable core accreting steadily underneath. This was especially evident in the surf therapy program, in how quickly body knowledge came back a year later for some of the kids. From a mental health perspective, the value of surfing and swimming over a lifetime brought with it both a material and immaterial/imaginative accretion that shaped an affective response. That interplay of memory and identity (family, friends, community) and repeated body-memory of surfing/swimming as resilient health practice tap into a salutogenic vision of how resources build over time and become encrusted in/on the body. Accretions can of course be knocked off or chipped away, but the concept is utilized to suggest a strengthened bond through the subtle overlay of affective and experiential practices and memories, enabled in particular types of places.

Equally, a deeper understanding of the endangered and vulnerable nature of the water was specifically identified through immersion within it—a form of immersive blue attunement in which being in water forces a deeper form of listening that blocks out disabling noise (Pink, 2015; Spinney, 2015). While the research illustrated the value and importance of capturing multisensory experiences of place and multiple uses of blue space sites, in theoretical terms this suggests a relational approach to how we value blue space that, via a wider coastal eco-sensibility, adds an environmental shared care component into that assemblage (Duff, 2014). Our findings emphasize a multidimensional view of health, with participants experiencing positive changes to sense of self, health, and well-being that triggered affective and embodied capacity-building. They also recognized the connective and therapeutic properties of the water environments in which they experienced a sense that echoed the name of a Sydney-based mental health swimming group called appropriately, “head above water” (Nunn, 2019). There remain limits to what each initiative/immersive experience can offer but their roles as productive encounters within blue space and the benefits they produce in terms of the maintenance and management of health and well-being are clearly expressed by both participants and coaches alike. For open-water swimming in particular, and to a slightly lesser extent, surfers, access to an open and free resource emphasize their potential as a public health resource that in turn provides “situated resilience” (Atkinson, 2019). Yet what remains central to all are the complex but nuanced experiences of “place capture/rapture” wherein there is a space for embodied difference and emotional diversity, within which all can productively immerse themselves.