Save Our Surf (SOS) was a grassroots organization that stopped many urban developments along Hawai'i's public shorelines from the 1960s to the 1990s by mobilizing large numbers of people, especially young surfers to campaign against shoreline developments. Through these efforts, SOS saved many surf, reef, and fishing sites all across the Hawaiian Islands. Surfers John Kelly and George Downing started the organization in the early 1960s with the beliefin respecting peoples' intelligence, and a mission to awaken a peoples' responsibility, their love for the ocean, and a deeper understanding of the political and economic forces that was driving Hawai'i's urbanization. John Kelly once wrote, "We decided to expose and defeat the politician-supported plans that would destroy our surfsites. So we set up a small print shop in '68 to get this information outto the surfers. Many of the planned coastal changes threatened the resources of thousands of surfers, fishermen, swimmers and other users of our Hawaiian shoreline." (A Few Notes About John M. Kelly, Jr.)

With large gatherings of surfers, swimmers, fisherman, their friends, neighbors, families, and supporters, SOS grew rapidly as a "Peoples' Environment Movement" that not only organized campaigns against devastating shoreline projects, but also against the evictions happening in fishing and farming communities like Mokauea, Waiahole-Waikane and Kalama Valley. The organization worked in three stages to mobilize support: Education, Organize, and Confront. Through these three stages, SOS empowered surfers and others to tackle proposed shoreline developments by getting the facts and researching the issues on all sides, gathering support by informing as many as possible, and confronting those who supported the development projects with protest and mass rallies. Throughout the organization's existence from the 1960 to the 2000s, 50S won over 38 major environmental victories, foiling plans for offshore airports and runways, new high-rise hotels on remains of former reefs, beach-widening projects in Waikiki, and the evictions of families from their ancestral lands.