NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. -- Surfing is big business on the coast and there could soon be a serious shortage of surfboards. About 30 Central Florida surfboard finishing shops and three dozen retailers are worried about lost jobs and closed businesses as a result.

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The innards of most surfboards are made of hard foam and the factory that made 90-percent of it worldwide has shut down.

Joe Armstrong owns Inlet Charley's Surf Shop in New Smyrna Beach and his business just got hit by a very big wave.

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"It's in our face, though, every magazine, the Internet, everywhere we look. Everybody we talk to, that's the topic, the conversation. Every customer who walks in, first thing they ask," he said.

The Clark foam is the core of most of the world's surfboards and Mr. Clark has been forced by the EPA to shut down his California foam-making factory. That means Central Florida craftsmen who shape and finish surfboards can no longer get the raw materials.

So, Joe said, the smaller shops might not survive.

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"They have no source of making boards, then everybody's done," he said.

John Brooks has been surfing since he was five. He owns 20 Clark surfboards and he's a sales rep to 70 Florida surf shops, and he admits people are nervous.

"What we're dealing with now is a guy who had a monopoly on the industry and now that's gone, and everybody's scrambling to find where they're gonna get boards from. But as long as there's surf and the ocean, there will be surf shops to sell surfboards," he said.

Joe figures his shop is big enough to survive, but he thinks the smaller ones might run into trouble if there's a surfboard shortage.

"If you're on the beach, people want to come into your store. And, if anything, they just want to look at the boards. Even if they don't buy one, they at least want to see boards. They want to feel it. And if you don't have it, they won't feel it," he said.

The price of a surfboard in Central Florida has jumped $50 or $100 in many shops. Joe said he's afraid, as early as this fall, some of them will be out of business.