Trouble at Cape Kiwanda

Amateur surfer Jason Garding had just climbed out of a 12-foot swell in the ocean near Pacific City, Ore., when he noticed a flat-bottomed dory fishing boat heading for the beach at high speed. "That boat is hauling," Garding muttered to a friend as they watched it skim the trough between two waves, fast enough nearly to overtake the breaker in front of it.

What Garding didn't see was the group of surfers still out at sea. Neither, apparently, did the dory captain.

Seconds later, the boat was on the beach, followed by a pack of surfers carrying a badly bleeding 14-year-old boy. The boat's propeller had severed an arm from Cole Ortega, who spent the coming days fighting for his life at Legacy Emanuel Hospital in Portland, where doctors reattached the limb. Ortega is expected to be released from the hospital some time this week.

The gruesome accident, on July 6, was an unfortunate peak in rising tensions between surfers and fishermen here at Cape Kiwanda near the iconic Haystack Rock. And in a world where shorelines are a precious resource, the episode is perhaps a harbinger of conflicts to come.

The 350-member dory fleet here is one of the last bastions on the West Coast where as many as 200 fishermen launch boats daily straight from the sand into the breakers during the summer tuna season. Way back in 1926, dwindling salmon runs convinced state legislators to close nearby Nestucca Bay to commercial fishing, a law that remains in effect today and which created a de facto port at Cape Kiwanda, where dory boats began launching by the hundreds, loaded into the water by horseback and early automobiles. "It's become the dory capital of the world," says Paul Hanneman, chair of the Pacific City Dorymen's Association. "We're the only port for 70 miles."

But this slender strip of oceanfront also draws a burgeoning number of surfers who don't mind braving 54-degree water. In the past five years, movies such as "Blue Crush" and surf brands like Roxy have made the sport as hip as it's been since the Beach Boys crooned about catching waves—even on the most remote breaks of the Oregon coast.

For decades, the dorymen conducted business with nearly no incident—the fleet has lost only one member to drowning in 50 years—but as surfers dotted the waters with greater frequency in recent years, tension has mounted. Boat operators have been known to communicate via middle-digit sign language or irate words with surfers who block their route to and from the shore, though no one here remembers such a conversation ever coming to blows. Experienced surfers know to steer clear of the wind-protected waters just to the south of the cape, and they generally have less interest in roaming that stretch of ocean anyway. The same refuge from prevailing north winds that makes it safe for dories to launch means the waves are generally tepid for surfers. Wading children are more likely to get in a dory boat's way than a paddling surfer.

Less experienced wave seekers, who have flocked to Cape Kiwanda in recent years because it's a good place for beginners, are another story. And July 6 offered a rare convergence of factors that conspired to leave Ortega's bloody arm bobbing in the surf.

It being a holiday weekend—and the first with warm weather on the blustery Oregon coast in weeks—meant surfers would be out in force. Keen to swell forecasts, they knew a big series of delicious waves would be rolling in by midmorning. But the swell's speedy arrival, from three feet to 12 feet in less than two hours, caught the dory fleet by surprise that day, or at least meant they needed to get out of the water quickly. Landing a boat in the surf zone is a dicey endeavor, as it means navigating the narrow trench between two breaking waves and staying exactly in that spot until back on land. Boats can't stop once they commit, and they must keep up a certain speed to avoid being swamped by a breaker. The only realistic way to avoid collisions with surfers is for surfers to stay out of the boat lane, which they're often warned to do by the long, loud blast of a doryman's air horn.