ON BREAK:Pro visits kids at surfing camp

When Peter Mel went surfing for the first time, it wasn’t an auspicious debut.

At the age of 6, the future pro surfer went to the beach with his father, who ran a surf manufacturing company. With his dad’s encouragement, Mel sailed forward into a wave — and ended up capsized and tangled in kelp. At that moment, Mel said, he vowed never to go surfing again.

In the last three decades, however, Mel has changed. So, for that matter, has surfing.

“You guys are lucky,” he told a group of students on Tuesday at the Ocean Adventures camp, a nine-week summer camp that teaches the principles of catching a wave. “They didn’t have surf camps when I was growing up.”

For the last 20 years, Erik Nelsen, a surf camp operator for Quiksilver, has run the Ocean Adventures program in Newport Beach. During the summer, boys and girls ages 6 to 14 put on wet suits and learn the essentials of surfing. Along the way, they attend lectures on waves, water safety and other aspects of the sea — sometimes from the best sources in the world.

On Tuesday, four dozen kids gathered at the shore to listen to Mel, a Santa Cruz resident and pioneer of big-wave surfing who has been featured in “Step Into Liquid” and other surfing documentaries. Backed by a roaring tide that forced him to project loudly, Mel told stories about his early days of surfing and his adventures to Hawaii, South Africa, Scotland and other destinations around the globe.

“One of the things surfing has given me is the opportunity to travel the world,” said Mel, 36. “To find big waves, you’ve got to travel.”

At one point, a student asked if Mel had ever encountered a great white shark. The surfer replies that yes, he had — but only in a fish tank, not the ocean.

Shortly afterward, the student surfers took to the waves again. Nelsen — whose father, Jeff Nelsen, runs a marine science class during the summer in Newport Beach — includes two different camps in his summer program. One, the Roxy Surf Camp, is strictly for girls, while the other, sponsored by Quiksilver, is coed.

Many of the young surfers in this year’s camp had been on the waves for years, but a few were new recruits. Cousins Allison and Emily White tried surfing for the first time on Monday, and did pretty well … at least better than Mel did his first time.

“It’s sort of frightening, because I don’t like big waves, but it’s fun standing up for the first time,” said Emily, 9, of Laguna Niguel.

Added Allison, 10, of Aliso Viejo: “The first time I stood up, it was fun. I thought, ‘I’m doing it! I’m doing it!’”