Here’s a pretty sweet story from PBS about a group of Puerto Rican surfers fighting to protect their local break from being wrecked by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Although the story is nearly a year old, those cats down in PR should inspire all surfers to do what they can to preserve our precious waves.
Hats off to the Samurai Surfers.
The folks at Caracol Films have produced an insiders guide to surfing Morocco. The waves in the trailer look pretty nice as does the local culture.
We’ll try to give you a more in depth review of the film once we scare up a copy.
In the meantime you can learn more about surfing in Morocco at http://www.surfmaroc.co.uk and you can see some clips of Moroccan waves in the video section of http://www.nosurfinbrighton.co.uk.
Most surfers typically support green initiatives that promote environmental sustainability, but evidently not when it comes at the cost of smaller waves. Surfers in the south of England (Cornwall) are fighting the construction of a wave energy farm on the grounds that it will reduce the power of the waves by more than 10% along a 20 mile stretch of beach.
Who would’ve ever thought that surfers would be battling environmentalists for waves? I wonder if the environmentalists are telling the surfers not to worry because the waves will be getting bigger as a result of the increase in violent weather that global warming is allegedly causing.
If the wave energy farm gets built and it puts a significant dent in the surf, then there’ll probably be a good opportunity for companies that know how to make waves. Imagine if the energy generated by the wave energy farm were actually used to make waves in a wave pool. That’d be too much.
Honestly, this is a precarious situation for the global surfing community. It’s a textbook case of NIMBY and it’ll be interesting to see the final outcome.
Here’s a link to the article http://www.globalsurfnews.com/news.asp?Id_news=22550
UPDATE: Not all surfers are protesting the WaveHub project. A group called Surfers Against Sewage would rather the waves be a little bit smaller if it means the water will be cleaner.
Set to open their first location in Orlando, FL later this year, SurfParks plans on making some tasty waves, specifically for surfing, in wave pools all over the country. We’re talking waves made by surfers for surfers.
If the idea takes off, it could bring big change to the sport of surfing. Imagine, instead of duking it out for crumby waves with all the yahoos at your local break, you just cruise inland to a warm salt water pool and pay $30 for 15 waves that all have a nice, consistent shape. Now I know it doesn’t exactly sound like poetry to those of us who actually enjoy the excitement of paddling around in the ocean with all the critters and knuckleheads and pollutants . . . but manufactured waves could have a significant impact on the sport that we hold so sacred.
By making surfing more accessible to all the people living in wave deprived regions of the world, SurfParks could draw more people to the sport and undoubtedly fuel competition in various parts of the industry like Pro Surfing and surfboard production.
Hit http://surfparks.com and check out the Technology section. They’ve got some cool pics and videos of scale models of the waves.
We’ve got the inside track on SurfParks, so we’ll let you know what’s up.
Native Hawaiians use the term "kulana nalu" for the place where a surfer paddles to catch a wave; usually the most distant line of breakers. Learn this and some other Hawaiian surf speak at this site.