The surf industry got its annual night to dress up Friday at the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel for the 2008 Waterman’s Ball.

The dress up also raises a lot of cash for environmental charities. This year’s honorees of Mark Occhilupo, Eduardo Arena and Jackson Browne helped the Surf Industry Manufacturers Assn. raise approximately $500,000.

Beneficiaries included 17 different environmental or educational groups, though most notably Sierra Club’s Friends of the Foothills and the Surfrider Foundation, key groups involved in local surfers’ fight against the building of a portion of the 241 Toll Road through San Onofre State Park.

The 80-year-old Arena was given the Lifetime Achievement Award. The Peruvian surfer helped form and run the International Surfing Federation in 1964 and organized the first World Surfing Championships in the mid-1960s.

Upon receiving the award, he told the story of putting together the first contest in 1965 in Lima. A curious operator asked him who he was after she connected multiple international calls to him, he said “I’m nobody. I’m just organizing a world surfing tournament.”

Rockstar and activist Browne received the Environmentalist of the Year award and said “I’m so grateful to surfing for teaching me about life and its metaphors.”

Browne dedicated his award to “The people who do this work every day and don’t get any award. Their award is a clean environment.”

Occhilupo is the 1999 world champ and one of the most beloved and respected figures in pro surfing. Qualifying for the world tour in his teens, he became Tom Curren’s main rival in the 1980s. Occhilupo then left the tour for eight years battling burn out and depression. His comeback is one of surfing’s greatest stories.

Though Occhilupo is well known for his humor, he was dead serious when he told the audience, “I lost two of my favorite breaks. Kirra (in Australia) is gone. You’ve got to save Trestles.”

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