Although we know we should paddle out every day to stay in shape, there comes a time for every South Shore surfer when to do so seems ridiculous.

That time is called the off-season, which settled in this month after a couple of fun-size swells sweetened late October.

“Whoa, there are no waves AT ALL here,” Professor Pauline said during a recent early morning surf check.

“And the North Shore is way too big,” she added with a shrug and a resigned smile. “What can you do?”

What do average surfers do when there’s either no surf or too much?

“I’m getting sick of jogging,” the Captain complained the other morning. “I haven’t been surfing in five days!”

Soon he’ll get on his Harley and set out to circumnavigate the island with the wind in his long white hair, catching views of the surf on the Windward and North shores.

He’ll drop in on his other lineup — the benches along the lanai at Papa Ole’s Kitchen in Hauula — to shoot the breeze with other bikers over burgers, garlic chicken and fries.

When she isn’t competing, three-time world champion surfer Carissa Moore supplements her surfing with a land-based workout that includes jumping rope, side planks and hopping on and off benches, as she demonstrated in a Honolulu Star-Advertiser story earlier this year.

Moore said she also does yoga, a practice she shares with other surfers. In the new edition of his book “Surf Is Where You Find It,” Gerry Lopez describes how surfing and yoga have kept him in balance for 40 years.

Having torn the meniscus in my left knee doing a sharp backside turn, followed by surgery, I’ve been warned off jogging. So this autumn, after a seven-year hiatus, I signed up for classes at a yoga studio. It’s already helped with flexibility and strength, but I feel clumsy and out of place among the Spandex-sculpted, groovy hipsters who nail every pose in quick Vinyasa progression.

The instructors try not to look alarmed when I explain about my knee and that my doctor forbids me from doing the plow or headstand due to a condition known as “surfer’s neck.” And it doesn’t help that I can’t seem to keep my “oms” in harmony with the rest of the class.

At least I can still swim. Pauline agrees with me that it’s the best exercise after surfing, so on any given waveless morning you can glimpse her stroking out to sea.

In summer I could dip in the ocean before or after work. But now, as the days get shorter, I feel safer doing my laps in a pool rather than in dark water offshore.

The other evening, after I swam at the downtown Laniakea YWCA, Ben Selepeo came out from behind his desk for a chat.

“You really love the water,” he said, and told me a legend he’d learned from his grandmother when he was a child in Saipan.

“There was a girl who spent all her time swimming in the ocean — she loved it more than anything — and she begged her fairy godmother to turn her into a fish,” Ben said.

“But her mother would miss the girl, so the godmother made her only half fish; she could live in the water but she stayed human from the waist up.”

Ben’s eyes twinkled as he smiled. “Her name was Sirena. A mermaid, like you.”

I’ll be looking for Sirena and Hina, the Hawaiian moon goddess, tonight when the full moon rises; it will be a “supermoon,” the biggest and closest the satellite has come to the Earth in 68 years.

Starting at 6 p.m., the Watumull Planetarium at Bishop Museum will host a moon event, which includes a show and viewing the orb through the museum’s telescopes. (For tickets, visit bishopmuseum.org.)

It’s tempting, but I have somewhere else to be.

When you’re out in the lineup at Suis, the full moon seems to rise out of the sea, casting a path of silvery scales over the black water.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and catch a wave, even if the surf is flat.

There’s always something.