If you haven´t heard of Dr. Kerry Black then you should quickly google this guy as he might be one of the people I would categorise as a Surfing Futurist. He is the driving force and creative mind behind artificial reefs of which 24 are currently being built around the world. Dr. Kerry Black is responsible for the Narrowneck project on Australia’s Gold Coast, the most successful man-made surfing break to date.

As you can imagine building a surf break is not a walk in the park. Kerry and his team did a huge amount of modeling, video work, air photography work, undertaking any means to look at what’s happening in the bay in the first place. Then they use their database of world-class reefs – they have some 42 now – including places like Pipeline. They look at the components in those reefs that makes them so good. They pull out the characteristics from those excellent reefs so they know how such perfect waves are created. Dr. Kerry says, that

nature has the problem of combining these sort of features randomly; it’s just luck if they all fall into place. But with computer design you can model the existing reefs based on years of empirical research and data.

Dr. Kerry Black also works on a project with Surfparks and the Versa Reef. They try to recreate different waves in one wave pool: “It’s like a great big water-filled bladder under pressure. And the height of the bladder over the floor of the pool is controlled by cables that are set to particular lengths. So the bladder can only inflate up to a certain height. Okay, and then the cables are all computer-controlled to give it a reef shape, so you just have a screen that says Burleigh or Beachbreak or Pipeline. You press a button on the screen and all the computer files are built in, it moves the cables to the right length with these big winches. And then the pressure is taken off the floor and it’s all moved and the pressure’s put back on the floor again. So you can get an infinite number of shapes.”

Seems like the wave of the future has arrived.

Websites:
Interview with Dr. Kerry Black in Surfing Magazine
Article on Narrowneck reef
Mount reef project website
UK – Bournemouth reef project website

Oil tankers leaking, companies irresponsibly dumping waste into the sea, people throwing cigarette butts on the beach; that’s just the start of a long list of crimes against nature and in this case our oceans. Everyone and especially the surfers amongst us should do everything possible to protect the future of our blue playground. “Be true to blue”, the website name of project BLUE makes the right call. And to secure future surf sessions everyone can contribute to a better future. Surf companies are making an effort as well. Project BLUE is a surf industry initiative dedicated to keeping our oceans, waves and beaches safe and thriving. By buying exclusive project BLUE gear, a portion of the proceeds fund coastline protection initiatives worldwide. Six of the top global surf brands invested into a program to support the Surfrider Foundation, a leading global grass-roots organisation. So get your cash out and buy some of these products and even more important: Get active. The website offers tips on how to help protect your oceans.

From now on, every time you go to the beach, pick up one (or if you want even more) piece (s) of rubbish.

If surfers worldwide do it every time they go for a surf, imagine the impact! You can make a change. Do it! Leave a comment with a simple idea that everyone could pick up tomorrow and which will help protect our oceans.

More info: Project Blue website

One of the biggest challenges in Surfing nowadays is Big Wave Surfing. But that’s obviously not enough for some surfers that constantly try to push themselves further. Garrett McNamara and Keali’i went to Alaska to surf the waves formed from “calving” glaciers, that occurs when huge pieces break off and hit the water.
More info: Garrett McNamara’s homepage

In case you tried to stalk some pro surfers on Facebook or myspace and were not successful, don’t worry, I can tell you where you can get close and personal with them. Most of the travelling pros are blogging on wordpress. So, if you want to know who Taj Burrow played an April Fool’s joke on, and who Kelly Slater surfed with during his leisure time at Bells, then you should check out that blog. The blog is part of a bigger webpage, called WPS – World Professional Surfers, which gives you access to videos, photos and interviews around the World Championship Tour. The WPS, which was formed in Jeffrey’s Bay in July 2001, is guided by eight objectives which reflect their commitment to the professional surfing world.

I just came home from a surf at Bondi Beach and it was, as most of the time, pretty average. The wind was sideshore and a wobbly 3ft swell was hitting poor-quality banks. I drove home dreaming of classic Indo line-ups. A perfect wave might not be too far away for some Australian surfers in the future. The surfboard designer and shaper Greg Webber is currently working on a circular wave pool that should produce anything from beginner waves to two meter tubes. On his webpage he gets our imagination going by saying:

Imagine riding a two meter perfect tube for thirty seconds. Imagine that you can catch twelve of these an hour with each wave being yours and and yours alone. Imagine paying less than AUS$30 for such an experience.

If you want to know more about Greg Webber’s project, check out the Liquid Time Wave Pools website.
Let me know what you think about wave pools? What is your vision of surfing’s future?

The times are gone when you were only surrounded by men in the water. More and more women are joining their male counterpart in the waves enjoying the ride. But what happens once this brave women have to raise children? Running between shopping malls, day care and other mother related duties doesn’t leave much time for a surf. And who should take care of the offspring when you are surfing? Two Byron Bay surfer-girls turned surfer-mums, Vanessa and Julia, came up with the idea:

They set up a partnership where one mum would watch the two children on the beach while the other one got in a 30 minute surf, and vice versa.

Now they couldn’t keep this new found secret to themselves. Every surfing mum had to have the opportunity to surf as much as they wanted or needed too. So Surfing Mums was formed. Surfing Mums is a group based at your local break where you can meet other mums and form the same partnership that Julia and Vanessa did.  In January 2008  Surfing Mums then took the big step of becoming an incorporated association. A real surfing club for mothers was born.

To find out about a Surfing Mum group close to your local break and how it works, look at their website: Surfing Mums

Simple claims in its tagline “a nice little shoe company” and “shoes for a happy planet”. The second may be true for their latest product range, the ecoSNEAKS. Made from hemp (a plant which grows without herbicides and pesticides), PET (a material made from recycled plastic bottles) and recycled care tyres, the shoes definitely make mother Earth smile. Pictures of the  photographer and surfer Joe Curren, which show the beauty of his (and Simple’s) hometown Santa Barbara, are printed on the Joe Curren Sno Tire model. They have a nice little website which you should look at.

More info: Simple website

Scott Aichner just added another dimension to surf photography. He built a camera system that incoporated 2 cameras with fisheye lenses set at 90 degrees from each other, on the the same plane, that shoots simultaneously and covers 270 degrees of view. He mentions on his website that “the original idea was to be able to capture a surfer in the the tube and see out of the tube in the same photograph”.

More info: Scott Aichner’s website

When I started surfing more than ten years ago, I remember that most surf movies were fast and loud, accompanied by some loud Punk Rock soundtrack. Nowadays you can find some documentary-style films whose main purpose is not to show radical moves but tell you a story about the surfers in the movie and their experience. One exceptional movie is Sliding Liberia, produced by Dan Malloy in 2007 in West Africa. Dan shows us the situation of people in a struggling country and manages fluid transitions between a harsh reality and the freedom of surfing. I watched Sliding Liberia in the Open Air Cinema in Bondi in March 2007 and I can only recommend this movie to every surfer and non-surfer. Dan Malloy was present at the screening and spoke about the movie.

“Last summer I had a very rare travel opportunity. My cousin Britton has been attending Stanford studying film. There he became good friends with a guy named Nicholia Lidow, a political science major who has focused his studies on the development of nations that are currently experiencing civil war or just very recently experienced a civil war. What that means, in short, is that Nicholia has been spending all of his free time in Liberia. Although Nicholia is very serious about his major and is actively working and studying at all times, he also happens to be a good surfer, and Liberia also happens to have amazing surf. Very few people have ever surfed the Liberian coastline. With development in Liberia halted by the vicious rule of Charles Taylor, the country has been in the midst of a gruesome civil war for the last 20 years. Under intense pressure on all fronts, Charles Taylor finally resigned. Upon his resignation, the United Nations agreed to occupy Liberia with a plan to reestablish peace. The Liberian people elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as their new leader and the U.N. quickly began purchasing guns from Liberian citizens to get them off the street. Peace came almost overnight. The bombs stopped, the gunshots stopped, the fear of war was finally behind them. The war is over, but Liberia remains one of the poorest nations on the planet. Getting killed is now a worry of the past. The struggle now for the Liberian people, with a completely obliterated system, is to stay alive. With the war over, Nicholia invited a few of us to experience Liberia with him and his local Liberian friends. He took us on a three week journey that I will never forget. When we arrived there was only one Liberian surfer named Alfred. Now it looks like there are three.” (Source: Cleanestline)

You can watch the trailer here:

The official homepage: Sliding Liberia

 
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