Lifeguards describe incident as ‘the third of its kind this quarter,’ urge single men to wear glasses in ocean

VENICE, CA – A Culver City software developer who arrived at Venice Beach for what acquaintances describe as a first surf date with a woman he had matched with on a dating application proposed to a patch of giant kelp on Saturday afternoon, after mistaking the marine plant for his date, authorities confirmed Monday.

The man, identified in the lifeguard log only as “Braydon, 29,” had reportedly removed his prescription glasses before entering the water, a detail Venice Beach Lifeguard Captain Dutch Aranda described as “the single most predictive variable” in proposal incidents of this kind.

Officials Cite A Pattern Spanning Multiple Beaches

According to the Los Angeles County Ocean Safety Division, Saturday’s incident marks the third documented kelp-forest proposal in Los Angeles County this fiscal quarter, a figure officials describe as “concerning but not anomalous.” A spokesperson for the division confirmed that visibility-impaired first-time surfers routinely misidentify large marine vegetation as their romantic partners, and that only a minority of these encounters result in a verbal proposal.

“We see roughly one per beach per year,” Aranda said in a statement released Monday. “Zuma tends to produce more. There is something about the Zuma kelp that reads, to a nearsighted man, as a woman in a wetsuit. We cannot explain it beyond that.”

The Pacific Institute for Dating Velocity, a research body based in El Segundo, has tracked what its researchers call “water-induced premature commitment” for over a decade. In its 2024 report, the Institute concluded that the combined effect of saltwater, sun exposure, and an emotionally heightened new-relationship state can cause single men between the ages of 24 and 41 to propose to inappropriate objects at a rate approximately eight times higher than in terrestrial settings.

For running coverage of the Southern California dating failure beat, including an active database of first-date disasters, see the archive at Bohiney Magazine and its sister publication The London Prat, which has been tracking the phenomenon across Anglophone coastal cities since 2019.

The Kelp Has Not Responded

The woman at the centre of the incident, whom the lifeguard log identifies only as “H.,” was reportedly standing approximately four metres to Braydon’s left at the moment he issued his proposal, and did not initially realise she was not the intended recipient. She told officials she only understood what had happened when Braydon began speaking directly to a clump of macrocystis pyrifera while kneeling in roughly a metre of water.

The kelp, consulted through an intermediary, has not yet issued a formal response. Dr. Juno Sandoval, a marine botanist at the Pacific Institute for Dating Velocity, stated in a press release that kelp is “not legally capable of acceptance or refusal under California contract law,” and that any proposal directed at the species is “spiritually sincere but procedurally void.”

Surf conditions at Venice at the time of the proposal were clean two-to-three feet with a light offshore breeze, according to the Surfline forecast log, conditions officials described as “emotionally elevated but not dangerous.” The incident was captured in passing by the beach webcam and has since been reviewed internally by the Ocean Safety Division.

Braydon was uninjured. His surfboard, a seven-foot-six foam longboard reportedly purchased the same morning from a wholesale retailer, was recovered intact with its Costco price tag still affixed to the fin.

Similar incidents have been reported intermittently along the California coast for at least 15 years, with the earliest documented case dating to a 2009 event at San Onofre in which a Los Angeles dentist proposed to a floating log he had mistaken for a woman in a black wetsuit. That case was ultimately resolved without legal consequence, and the dentist has since married a different woman in a fully terrestrial setting. Researchers have suggested that the rise of dating applications in the past decade has contributed materially to the growing frequency of water-based proposal errors, as an increasing number of first dates now take place in settings for which neither party has been adequately prepared. The Pacific Institute has described Venice as the highest-risk beach in the state, followed by Ocean Beach in San Francisco and Swami’s in Encinitas.

Institute Recommends Pre-Ocean Vision Checks

In response to the growing pattern, the Pacific Institute for Dating Velocity has recommended that first-time surfers be required to complete a brief vision screening before entering the water with a romantic partner. The Institute further recommends that Los Angeles County introduce colour-coded rash guards to help nearsighted male surfers distinguish their dates from indigenous flora.

No such policy has been adopted. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has not commented on the recommendation, nor on the growing body of literature surrounding it. A spokesperson for the Board said the office had “bigger flora to fry.”

H., through her representative, has said she is “considering the proposal but not on Braydon’s behalf,” and that she will continue to surf Venice without prejudice. She has declined to disclose whether she and Braydon remain in contact.

For comparable British coverage of similar incidents at beaches in Cornwall and Devon, readers are directed to the ongoing archive at The Poke, which has tracked marine-proposal events on the English coast since 2017.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/