Key Takeaways:
- SIMA’s Environmental Fund hosted its 2026 Waterman’s Ball at The Ranch at Laguna Beach, with Surf Expo and Audi as major sponsors.
- Matt Biolos of Lost Surfboards received the Waterman of the Year award and Greg MacGillivray received the Lifetime Achievement award.
- Save The Waves Coalition was named Environmentalist of the Year as SIMA president Paul Naude warned of renewed offshore oil drilling threats along the California coast
The Surf Industry Members Association hosted its 2026 Waterman’s Ball at The Ranch at Laguna Beach, an evening that mixed heavy nostalgia with a pointed environmental warning and closed out with two of the most respected names in surf and film taking the stage.
Matt Biolos Named Waterman of the Year
Matt Biolos, founder of Lost Surfboards and known industry-wide as Mayhem, took home Waterman of the Year, an award that recognizes someone actively shaping the sport’s culture rather than simply its history, according to his program bio. It credits him with helping define an era of high-performance surfing built on innovation, humor and attitude (a sometimes ornery attitude, let’s be honest), with boards ridden by some of the sport’s best while still trusted by everyday surfers.
Biolos opened his acceptance speech by pushing back on the honor itself.
“I’ve never thought of myself as a waterman,” he said. “I’m more of a factory man. I get up in the morning, and I get hopped up on coffee and I walk around a surfboard factory, and I’ve been doing it for 40 years.”
He traced the brand’s origin to 1980s Southern California, describing a teenage obsession with the era’s punk rock, surf media and the new wave of surfing. He knew early on that competing wasn’t his path in.
“I knew darn well right at the start I wasn’t an athlete,” he said. “I just knew I couldn’t go in the front way, so I had to sneak in the back way.”
That back way was talking his way into Herbie Fletcher’s San Clemente surf shop at 17 with a self-shaped board he admitted was “a horrible shape, horrible color.”
He credited his early partnership with Mike Reola as the turning point that took the brand from a scrappy operation run out of a rented house, with Biolos’s bedroom serving as the art department and Reola’s as admin, into an internationally known name.
Looking back on nearly four decades in the business, Biolos shared his thoughts on what he sees as the industry’s responsibility going forward.
“Creativity is king,” he said. “Remain disruptive, keep reinventing yourself, keep pushing forward.” He said the brand’s staying power has come from refusing to settle into its own success. “We can’t rest. I don’t believe in resting. I would say sleep when you’re dead. But you can’t get lazy.”
He closed his remarks around the White Stripes song “Little Room,” using it as a metaphor for a brand or an industry holding onto its identity even as it grows: “You don’t want to let things get away from you. You want to keep them tight. You want to hold your cards close.”
From there he turned the message outward, calling on the room to make space for whoever comes next.
“We need to inspire the next generation of kids to come along and let them make a bunch of noise and make a mess and let them kick all our asses and take it forward into the future,” he said.
Greg MacGillivray Honored for a Lifetime Behind the Camera
MacGillivray, cofounder of MacGillivray Freeman Films, received SIMA’s Lifetime Achievement award for a career that started in surf filmmaking and grew into one of the most decorated large-format filmmaking operations in the industry.
Five Summer Stories, made with the late Jim Freeman, stands as one of the most influential surf films ever made, and the studio has gone on to produce more than 50 large-format films, many for IMAX, bringing audiences into wild spaces around the world.
Accepting the award, MacGillivray reflected on a career built on good fortune. “I’ve been the luckiest guy in the world,” he said, tracing his path from those early surf films through Hollywood work on “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” “The Towering Inferno,” “The Shining” and “Big Wednesday,” then into IMAX. He also shared that he’d asked his wife, Barbara, for speech advice beforehand. Her response, he said, laughing: to skip trying to sound smart or funny and “just be yourself.”
He said the IMAX format’s museum setting gives his films outsized credibility with audiences, citing an internal poll that found museums topped the list of trusted sources of information.
“Museums are the most trusted source of factual information that the public has ever seen,” he said, adding that the appeal of large-format film comes down to where it plays. “The key is that they play in museums where the word is trusted.”
MacGillivray pointed to real world impact from his documentaries, including Ghana’s president moving to end clear-cutting practices after seeing footage of reef damage in Fiji, and Congress voting to fund Louisiana wetlands restoration after a Smithsonian screening of “Hurricane on the Bayou.”
He closed by looking ahead to his next chapter serving as a board member of the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center’s new museum in downtown Laguna Beach, calling the center “one of the most amazing museums ever constructed” and noting it is nearing completion with a grand opening planned for September 20.
Save The Waves Coalition Named Environmentalist of the Year
SIMA honored Save The Waves Coalition with its Environmentalist of the Year award, recognizing the organization’s work protecting surf ecosystems and coastal access around the world through advocacy, research, partnerships and conservation efforts. The award recognizes groups that have worked to protect oceans, beaches and waves for surfers and beachgoers while keeping coastal waters clean, beaches safe and surf breaks accessible.
The organization’s mission centers on the idea that surf breaks are worth protecting not only for the rides they produce but as coastal ecosystems that support local economies, sustain culture and connect communities to the ocean. Its work has helped give surfers a stronger voice in decisions that shape coastlines, reinforcing that the places surfers paddle out hold environmental, cultural and economic value alike.
Naude Sets the Stakes
SIMA President and Vissla CEO Paul Naude opened the evening by noting the event has raised more than $10 million over what he said was its 37th year, with funds distributed across a rotating list of ocean and coastal environmental groups. But Naude used most of his remarks to sound an alarm on newly approved offshore oil drilling near the California coast.
“Right offshore here, it’s been approved that oil drilling can be started again,” Naude said. “This is imminent. It’s not maybe. It’s a definite.”
Naude said there are 27 oil rigs currently operating off the California coast, all producing what he called substandard oil, with combined output roughly equivalent to just 10 minutes of the state’s daily driving fuel demand. He described the fight ahead as a collective one.
“So it’s going to be up to us, the people,” he said. “We’ve got an ocean to save,” he said, “and we’re going to need to do it one beat at a time.”
A Night of Big-Ticket Auction Items
The evening’s live auction leaned into the industry’s history and star power. Items included:
- A recreated replica of Peter “P.T.” Townend’s 7’10” single fin Magic board, hand shaped by Rusty Preisendorfer, paired with a private dinner and Duke’s Mai Tais evening hosted by Townend himself.
- A limited edition Biolos-designed Andy Irons replica surfboard with hand painted artwork by Drew Brophy.
- A museum-grade replica of Buttons Kaluhiokalani’s iconic Town surfboard, donated by the Aipa family.
- A week-long Costa Rica surf trip.
- An all-inclusive Tavarua surf trip for two.
- A South Africa surf, golf and safari package.
- A 2026 Audi Q3 S Line Quattro.
