The finalists of The Illume Awards 2026 have been announced. Check out the 20 stunning images that reached the decisive stage.

The winners will be announced on November 4, 2026.

Since 2006, The Illume Awards have received more than 210,498 submissions from over 30,489 photographers across 122 countries, reaching an audience of more than 500 million people.

Take a look at the best surf shots of the year in the surfing category.

Todd Glaser | Kelly Slater at Cloudbreak, Tavarua, Fiji

The afternoon this image was made, the trade winds were howling, and the swell had dropped from the day before, so I immediately thought about a creative way to capture the session.

Kelly is such a great collaborator, and I'd mentioned to him that it always looks cool to show the world what it's like under the water, especially with the new fins he was trying out.

I suggested to Kelly that we try to make a new underwater image, and he knew exactly what they meant.

When he took off, I held my breath and tried to be in the best position I could, knowing where he would do his turn.

Underwater, I patiently watched as he was coming down the line, and when he got close, I knew he was going to do something special.

The hand in the water acted as a pivot for him to apply even more torque to the action.

While the turn would have looked great above water, there are very few places in the world that have the water clarity like Fiji does, and we wanted to use that to our advantage to make a special image together.

I love the collaborative process of making images with friends.

The more I understand the wave, the action, and the tools I have to capture and create with, the more intimately we can collectively create a visual story that will not only capture the peak moment, but hopefully inspire others to go outside and play.

Anytime I get the chance to shoot underwater, I will!

Biography

Todd Glaser is a San Diego-born photographer, surfer, and waterman.

A Surfer staff photographer for over a decade, Glaser is prolific for his young age, earning more than a dozen covers during his tenure at the magazine.

Equally talented at shooting land, water, and lifestyle photography, his work has also appeared in The New York Times, Outside, Men's Health, GQ, and the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, in addition to commercial clients like La Mer, HBO, Adobe, and more.

When he isn't globetrotting chasing swells, treading water shooting in the tropics, or capturing images of the first wave ever ridden at Kelly Slater's Surf Ranch, Glaser can be found riding waves around his home, riding his bike, and enjoying the company of his wife, Jenna, and daughter Nora.

Camera Settings

Camera: Canon EOS R5
Lens: RF 24-105mm F2.8 L IS USM Z
ISO: 400
F-Stop: 6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec

Pablo Jiménez | Matt Newdick at El Sunzal, El Salvador

The only thing better than swimming in the ocean is swimming in the ocean with my camera.

The full experience, the little moments, the unrepeatable things you see, the fleeting glimmers of light through ever-changing water splashes.

Every time, it's different. Every time, it's a challenge. Every time, you miss out on something.

But every now and then, things align, like this moment with New Zealand's style master longboarder, Matt Newdick.

On this particular day, I had opted to shoot video instead of photos.

After a couple of hours of dodging surfers in a crowded session ahead of a competition, I eventually decided to switch and grab some snaps on my "low" megapixel camera.

The next thing I managed to capture was Matt cruising super close to me. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had something cool.

I love photography because of the places it takes me. It's my ticket to explore the world.

Biography

I'm a Chilean photographer based in Viña del Mar, with over 18 years behind the camera shooting surf and the lifestyle that surrounds it.

I grew up in the small beach town of Reñaca, where I took up bodyboarding as a kid, the start of a lifelong bond with the ocean.

In 2001, at age 20, I left Chile to chase waves around the world, spending eight years surfing through California, Hawaii, Australia, Indonesia, and Europe.

It was in 2008, while living in Ireland, that photography really took hold, with a borrowed camera and waterproof housing that opened up a whole new way of seeing the waves I'd been riding for years.

Back in Chile in 2009, I decided to study Advertising Photography as a way to sharpen my technique and broaden my field, while teaching myself water photography largely through trial and error.

Since 2015, I have worked as an official photographer for the International Surfing Association (ISA), traveling the world to cover surf competitions, including the debut of the sport at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and, most recently, the 2024 Paris Olympic surfing event held in Tahiti.

Camera Settings

Camera: Sony Alpha7s III
Lens: Sony 24-70mm f/2.8 GM
ISO: 500
F-Stop: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec

Brent Bielmann | Tatiana Weston-Webb at Teahupoo, Tahiti

This particular shot of Tatiana Weston-Webb was taken in Tahiti at a wave called Teahupoo. Tatiana was there competing for the World Surf League (WSL).

The contest ended, and we decided to stay for a few extra days. We woke up the morning after the contest finished, and it was as beautiful and as perfect as it could get.

Tatiana is no stranger to barrels, and when this wave came to her, she stood tall in it as she passed me by. Truly one of those moments where not a drop of water was out of place - the days you dream of!

I love being able to stop time and capture a moment. It's when time stands still.

Photography is an outlet for me to capture my love for the ocean and all of nature's elements and share it with the world.

I hope to inspire people to preserve and protect this beautiful world we live in. 

Biography

I'm a photographer and cinematographer from the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii.

I found my love for the ocean at a very young age and spent countless hours in the water as a child.

Being surrounded by something greater and more powerful than myself has always captivated me.

The ocean became an outlet where I could forget about the worries of life and become immersed in a world all its own.

That love for the ocean eventually led me to photography and a career that has taken me around the world.

Photography has given me the privilege of building relationships with people countries apart, experiencing different cultures, and traveling to places I never could have imagined.

Over the years, my work has grown from surf photography into filmmaking and cinematography, but my connection to the ocean and nature remains at the center of everything I do.

Photography has deepened my appreciation for creation and opened my eyes to just how incredible this world is.

I hope my images can show people the beauty of the natural world from a unique perspective and inspire them to appreciate, preserve, and protect it.

Camera Settings

Camera: Canon EOS R5
Lens: 15mm Fisheye
ISO: 100
F-Stop: 5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec

Owen Beim | Griffin Colapinto at Pipeline, Oahu, Hawaii, United States

I vividly remember paddling out that day at Pipeline to waves that were a bit funky, with the light being very wonky.

It was early in the morning, but the crowd was packed. I remember getting caught inside on the paddle out super badly - I think I took four mutant waves to the head.

After the last wave, I got a bit of a boost out, and I just heard someone behind me scream, "Keep going, we're so close!"

Sure enough, it was Griffin Colapinto, who was getting worked behind me as well. We both laughed it off as we entered the lineup, out of breath and exhausted.

Not even five minutes later, the sun popped out after a rain squall came through, creating this otherworldly light I had never really seen at Pipeline before.

Two waves came in, and sure enough, Griffin happened to be on one of them. It was a cool, full-circle moment for sure.

The smallest risk can result in the highest reward.

Biography

My name is Owen Beim. I am 23 years old, based in Laguna Niguel, California, pursuing freelance photography and videography.

I have spent the last eight or so years pushing myself in the ocean, mentally and physically, chasing the heaviest waves our planet has to offer.

There is no better feeling than a big adrenaline rush from Mother Nature, and the reward is some beautiful images at the end.

I have loved pushing myself over the years, and I cannot wait to see what the future holds.

Camera Settings

Camera: Sony Alpha7R IV
Lens: Zeiss 55mm f/1.4
ISO: 320
F-Stop: f/7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec

Mathew Tildesley | Samuel Ross at Outer Bombie, TAS, Australia

I find the lead-up to shooting these images to be the most stressful part of the whole mission.

Obsessing over the forecast, coordinating surf crew, and organizing my gear and self-fabricated water housings often has me in a spiral. But once I jump off the boat into the ocean, all of that washes away.

I consider the shots in my Strobe Rider series to be a team effort, a culmination of almost a decade of refinement and commitment between my riders, safety crew, family and the Tassie surf community.

This image of Samuel Ross is a result of a decade of trial, error and progression. Stuart Gibson swam as my strobe assistant to execute my unique style.

This wave is an offshore bombie breaking onto shallow reef.

It took me a long time to figure out where I was going with photography; I never felt like I had my own style or direction until I began shooting with a flash in the surf.

It's so rare to line up a session, yet slowly my obsession grew in pursuing this style of surf photography, and I finally had my own "thing."

I only pull the camera out a handful of times a year when the conditions line up, but it's the pursuit of perfection in these rare moments that keeps me coming back.

Biography

Mathew Tildesley is an obsessive chronicler of the ocean's many shifts and changes.

There are some forces of nature we mere humans can't manipulate, can't tame, or get away from. It's this raw and unpredictable beauty of the ocean that makes Mat want to get behind the lens.

The #surfstrobe project is particularly intriguing because the results are an enigma, entirely unknowable.

Whenever the rare glimmer of opportunity presents itself, Mat puts himself in situations where nature's most mysterious forces converge - the dark of the night and the power of the ocean.

These two aspects, feared by so many, are the very things Mat needs to bring his passion to life.

While generally, people don't get excited about the extended hours of darkness and cold water that winter brings.

Mat actually prefers shooting these #surfstrobe photos in Tassie winter.

He can shoot at more "civilized" hours; no need to wait until 10 at night or get up at 3 in the morning!

Camera Settings

Camera: Nikon D850
Lens: Sigma 50mm ART
ISO: 250
F-Stop: f/8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec

Andy Troy | Stig Hoefnagel at Höfn, Iceland

Andy Troy | Stig Hoefnagel in Southern Iceland

Stig Hoefnagel is an ambassador for a car brand, and for a new car release, they asked him to do a social media campaign.

The brand is really focused on adventure and discovering new places, and we had to combine it with a kitesurfing trip.

Iceland in spring seemed to be the right place to get the shots we wanted, and all of us had wanted to do a kitesurfing shoot for a long time already.

Stig drove all the way from the Netherlands to the ferry in Denmark, and Edwin Haighton (video) and I flew to Iceland.

For this shoot, we also designed a custom kite and a harness inspired by Iceland, fire, and ice. This really helped to get the unique shots.

In the years before I did kitesurf shoots, I was doing a lot of landscape photography, and Iceland was high on my bucket list for 10 years already.

So combining both types of shoots was a dream come true.

Stig is well known for doing stunts and adventurous things with a kite, and a place like Iceland is paradise for him.

We checked out every place with rivers, glaciers, and lakes on Google Maps. And we came up with some really unique locations showcasing kitesurfing and the beautiful landscapes.

One of the main things we wanted to do was kitesurfing in a glacier lake.

This sounded not too difficult to do, but most of the glaciers block the wind. At sea there would be 20 knots, but near the mountains, almost no wind.

After days of searching, we checked one more glacier near Höfn, and this time we were lucky. We had to guide Stig with our radio to get to the right places.

I asked Stig to maneuver through the ice, which popped out really well with the sun and the brown glacier water.

Photography brought me to places I would never have dreamed of visiting; work feels like trips with friends.

Biography

I started with videography and photography when I got interested into kitesurfing back in 2001.

There were no real tutorials, and I had to learn on my own with my parents ' cameras.

My skills started growing in the coming years when I met more and more professional kitesurfers.

While I did most of my kitesurfing photography for fun, I was doing quite a bit of corporate, drone, and landscape photography for work.

I also tried out a lot of other different sports I was interested in, like surfing, snowboarding, and skating.

Until one of the most well-known kitesurfers, Kevin Langeree, called me asking to help out with a product shoot.

This started my professional photography career in watersports and led to traveling the world to the most incredible places and meeting the world's best kitesurfers.

I always try to innovate with different techniques and get unique shots, combining my previous landscape photography with kitesurfing action.

Compared to a lot of other action sports, kitesurf photography can be quite challenging: strong, harsh winds, cold or hot weather, sand, water, waves, and currents.

Getting the shot makes it really rewarding in the end.

Camera Settings

Camera: DJI Mavic 4 Pro
Lens: Wide lens
ISO: 200
F-Stop: F2
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec

Camera: DJI Mavic 4 Pro
Lens: Wide lens
ISO: 100
F-Stop: F2
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec

Marcelo Maragni | Italo Ferreira at Baia Formosa, Brazil

Brazilian surfer Italo Ferreira was captured inside the “ring of fire” of an annular solar eclipse in Rio Grande do Norte on October 14, 2023.

The extraordinary photograph, taken by Marcelo Maragni, was the result of four months of planning, rehearsals, calculations, and location scouting involving more than 20 peaks and mountains.

Ferreira had to be positioned with millimetric precision, while Maragni worked from about one kilometer away using specialized equipment and communication tools.

The final image was captured on the first attempt during a window of just five seconds.

Ian Grose | Unknown Surfer at Mavericks, Half Moon Bay, CA, United States

This image was taken in 2020 at Mavericks in Half Moon Bay, California. This was one of the biggest swells I had ever seen in my life at the time, and Peter Mel got one of the craziest waves ever on the same day I captured this image.

I was in high school at the time, hoping to one day become a surf photographer, and my best friend and I drove up from Santa Barbara to catch this swell on our winter break.

We spent sunrise to sunset doing back-to-back days, sitting on the cliff, mesmerized, just watching the waves all day.

Eventually, three surfers passed by with their boards, and I took this image looking down on them from the cliff. The sun illuminated the sand, creating this really unique backdrop - one of my all-time favorite photos.

Photography makes me feel present. It allows me to notice moments and details that often go unseen, while connecting me with people and experiences I may have otherwise never known.

Biography

My name is Ian Grose. I'm a photographer and filmmaker from Goleta, California.

I picked up my first camera at 14 and haven't put one down since. What started as a high school hobby grew into a passion and, eventually, a full-time career.

Growing up near the ocean in a smaller beach town aided my love and passion for the outdoors and being in and around the water.

I spent the early days of my career down at Rincon, showing up every day there was a swell, meeting people, building connections, and trying to make a name for myself.

Over the past few years, I've had the privilege of being on the road full-time, traveling, working with various brands, and documenting professional surfing.

Last year I won the 2026 Follow the Light Grant, which was one of my biggest achievements. I strive to constantly push myself as an artist, develop my style, expand my network, and further my career.

Camera Settings

Camera: Canon 5D III
Lens: 70-200mm
ISO: 160
F-Stop: f/7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec

Julien Bonnin | Kauli Vaast at Hossegor, France

During an evening freesurf session on the sidelines of the Quiksilver Festival in Hossegor, France, Olympic Champion Kauli Vaast joined his Polynesian friends to enjoy a powerful autumn swell rolling through the French coastline.

As a storm approached and the light turned dramatic, Kauli generated incredible speed down the line.

Watching him build up so much speed, I knew he was going to attempt an aerial with huge amplitude. I prepared myself to aim my camera towards the sky, anticipating where he would launch.

When Kauli took off and began his full backflip directly above me, suspended between the exploding lip and the dark sky, I pressed the shutter.

The moment I captured the maneuver, I immediately knew I had something special. I had the feeling that I had just taken one of the best pictures I had ever made.

I still remember the excitement I felt as I got out of the water.

I immediately called my girlfriend and a few friends to tell them about the shot I had just captured. I was still full of adrenaline, barely able to contain my excitement.

For me, this image will always be connected to that feeling: seeing the opportunity, anticipating the moment, and then realizing, almost instantly, that everything had come together perfectly.

I have been passionate about surfing since I was a child, and I have always been fascinated by the incredible variety of colors the ocean can offer, as well as by the aesthetics of the sport itself.

During my teenage years, I unfortunately had to move away from the coast with my family.

To make up for the absence of the ocean and the passion I had for surfing, I devoured surf magazines.

Looking back, I think this is where much of my inspiration for photography came from, through the work of photographers such as Ben Thouard, Chris Burkard, Tim McKenna, Clark Little, and many others.

When I was finally able to reconnect with the ocean, I first got myself a GoPro to capture the sessions I shared with my friends.

After finishing my studies, I decided to settle near Hossegor, in the Landes, France, to be surrounded by some of the best surfers in the world and to experience its famous beach breaks.

Later, together with a very good friend with whom I started surfing - and who was a Red Bull Illume semi-finalist, Tristan Keroullé - we started exploring water photography together.

The energy of this partnership constantly pushes us to get in the water and chase the most memorable sessions of the year, even in the most challenging conditions.

Shooting together keeps us motivated, challenges our creativity, and encourages us to push our photography further every time we enter the water.

Biography

I am a French surf and water photographer, originally from Brittany and now based in the Landes, near Hossegor. Photography is a relatively recent passion for me, which I have developed alongside my professional and family life.

Outside photography, I work as an Adapted Physical Activity Specialist.

I help people with specific needs, including people with disabilities, people with chronic illnesses, and older adults, to take part in physical activity adapted to their abilities.

This work has taught me a lot about people, perseverance, and the importance of adapting to each individual situation.

I became a father for the first time in 2023 and am soon to become a father again.

Between work and family life, I try to make the most of every opportunity to spend time in the ocean, whether with a camera in my hands or simply with a surfboard under my feet.

In 2025, I had the privilege of photographing several heats from the water during the Quiksilver Festival in Hossegor.

It was an important experience in my development as a photographer and gave me the opportunity to work in an environment I had previously only experienced as a surfer.

Today, I continue to develop my photography through my passion for surfing, the ocean, and the people who bring its energy to life.

Camera Settings

Camera: Sony Alpha 7 III
Lens: Sony FE 24-105 F4 G OSS | SEL24105G
ISO: 100
F-Stop: F/4
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec

Trent Slatter | Dan Ryan in Australia

The nine-to-five has dragged itself well beyond its welcome. Peak-hour traffic tests one's patience, but there are worse things in life than a six-hour drive with your best mate.

The city lights fade behind us as we tick off small town after town until the road begins winding through the giant tingle forests of Western Australia's south coast.

Some of these ancient trees are extraordinary-the largest stretching around 24 meters in girth. Driving beneath the canopy at night has a way of reminding you how small you are.

Locked hands grip the wheel, hyper-vigilant, paying close attention to the greasy roads. We push deeper, hoping for two things: that we get there, and that we manage some sleep.

One of those happens, and the other is questionable. 

We launch the skis in darkness. First light is a race against a few fellow enthusiasts to see who can get stuck on the sand bar first.

High tide, there's enough water for the ski to skip across the shallow river until we meet the sea.

Venturing out into the open ocean and turning on an angle to hug the coast allows us to witness the sun rise over the valley of the giants. 

It's been a while. Few words are spoken moving forward. The Southern Ocean is cold, powerful, unruly, and notoriously unpredictable.

A stretch of ocean where conditions can change quickly and where nothing should ever be taken for granted; familiarity and fear combine with a level of excitement that often leaves one questioning life choices. 

Dan Ryan, a soul, a true waterman.

Arriving after casually hanging out with his nephew, he slips into the ocean almost unnoticed, surfs with genuine purpose, then disappears again before anyone has the chance to make a fuss of his above-average heroic surfing display. 

Dan, the Southern Ocean,  and I connecting - that's the image shown.

While the shutter only opens for a fraction of a second, chase the moments that are for life. 

Biography

At the age of 30, Trent Slatter left inner-city Adelaide, South Australia, and crossed the border in pursuit of the powerful, barreling waves of Australia's west coast.

Living with idiopathic pancreatitis has shaped his resilience and strengthened his determination to confront fear, embrace pain, uncertainty and seek meaning in extraordinary experiences-both rewarding and challenging.

Against the cold, unpredictable and rugged southern coastline, Trent's passion for the ocean has grown into a defining obsession.

His mind captures that deeply personal drive for greater moments, balanced by a clear awareness that every adventure carries the possibility of an undesirable outcome.

Through his work, he invites you into a life shaped by courage, vulnerability, and an enduring respect for the sea.

Camera Settings

Camera: Canon EOS 7DII
Lens: Canon 25-105 Wide Angle
ISO: 200
F-Stop: f/4.1
Shutter Speed: 3200 sec

David Biner | Kirvan Baldassarri at Punaauia, Tahiti, French Polynesia

A new friend I met while working in the Mentawai Islands, who was born and raised in Tahiti, invited me to come visit him after we spent hours talking about the beauty of his home and shooting Teahupoo.

A year later, I decided to take him up on his offer and fulfill my dream of shooting in French Polynesia, something I'd wanted to do since I started shooting in the water 10 years ago.

It was an absolute mind-blowing trip, scoring back-to-back-to-back swells and visiting numerous waves and islands.

But on my last session, when this photo was taken, we were at his local wave, and the conditions were absolutely perfect for capturing the best underwater photos of my life.

His name is Kirvan Baldassarri, and he is a world-class photographer.

But for this particular session, he was surfing, and all I could think about was trying to get the best photo of his life as a thank you for everything he had done for me.

This wave came through; he threaded the barrel perfectly, and I had ideal positioning underwater. I checked the photo afterward and knew it was one of the best shots I'd ever taken.

As he paddled past me, I asked him how he'd gone on the wave, making him suspect I didn't get a good shot.

Later, I showed him the photo, and he was ecstatic. I asked if he'd ever had an underwater photo like that before, and he responded with a blunt "no!"

Being able to capture that image and gift it to him after his generosity and help in fulfilling my dreams was a full-circle moment, an honor and a true pleasure.

The ocean is one of the few things that 8 billion people can agree is one of the most beautiful natural environments on our planet. I've dedicated myself to capturing that beauty and sharing it with the world, which gives me purpose to pursue my passion every day.

Biography

Growing up landlocked in the hot desert city of Phoenix, AZ, I was captivated by unfamiliar environments such as snowy mountains and beautiful oceans.

This led me to explore beyond the familiar surroundings of my upbringing and chase exotic places that I could connect with.

After school, I first moved away from my hometown to the snowy mountains for 4 years, which eventually led me out of the country to chase waves.

Moving to Mexico kickstarted my oceanic adventure, but three years later, my move to Indonesia is what started my professional camera career.

Today, I'm based in Indonesia, where I run my media operation under the name Indo Eye.

Shooting in the water for 10 years now, that pursuit of personal happiness has led me around the world, gathering moments and feelings into timeless souvenirs while opening my mind to how I could live a unique life that served my desires for exploration and documentation.

Along the way, I've had the opportunity to work with brands, athletes, and people who are passionate about what they do, while building relationships that have become some of the most meaningful parts of my life.

Looking back, I owe photography for being a big part of the reason why I am the observant and loving human I am today.

Camera Settings

Camera: Sony Alpha1
Lens: Sony 12-24mm f4 G
ISO: 500
F-Stop: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec

Lorenzo Passalacqua | Lorenzo Biondi at Maroubra Beach, Sydney, NSW, Australia

At first glance, "Avalanche" appears to show a surfer escaping a breaking wave. From directly above, however, the horizon disappears, and the ocean loses its familiar scale.

The white water begins to resemble snow collapsing from a mountainside, while the surfer becomes a small yellow mark caught between control and surrender.

What drew me to this frame was that the athletic achievement could not be separated from the danger surrounding it.

Surf photography often celebrates mastery: the clean maneuver, the perfect line, the decisive second.

Here, the ocean remains the dominant athlete. The surfer is skilled, but never larger than the force he is trying to navigate.

The image stayed with me because its meaning deepened over time.

After my own injury and long recovery, I recognized something personal in that imbalance: the experience of confronting a force that cannot simply be defeated, only understood and moved through.

That recognition gave the photograph its title.

The wave was no longer merely water, and the surfer was no longer simply performing; he was searching for the narrowest possible route through something overwhelming.

"Avalanche" is ultimately about the fragile space between fear and forward motion-the instant when escape remains uncertain, but stopping is not an option.

"Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt," says the Special Olympics athlete oath.

After three knee surgeries left me unable to walk for almost two years, I chose a drone because my body could not take me to the places I wanted to see.

The drone could.

Photography gave my competitiveness a new direction, and "Avalanche" became the image of that recovery: a small figure facing a force much larger than himself, still searching for a line through it.

That is what it means to keep pushing forward-not the certainty of winning, but the decision to move ahead when movement itself had been taken away.

Biography

Lorenzo Passalacqua is an Italian-born aerial, action and sports photographer based in Sydney, Australia.

He is drawn to the moment when control begins to fail: when a surfer is dwarfed by a collapsing wave, a boxer fractures into motion, or an athlete becomes almost abstract through speed.

Rather than treating sport as a catalog of decisive moments, he uses altitude, slow shutter speeds and intentional movement to reveal the pressure, vulnerability and chaos inside performance.

Unable to walk for almost two years after three knee surgeries, Passalacqua found photography through a drone - a camera that could move when he could not. It changed his career.

In 2026, his photo "Avalanche" was named Non-Professional Sports Photographer of the Year at the International Photography Awards.

Work from the project had previously won the Action category of Amateur Photographer of the Year 2024, placed second at the 2025 Berlin Photo Awards and 35AWARDS, and received a Platinum Award at the 2025 London Photography Awards.

Passalacqua now works from both air and ground, pursuing images in which movement becomes emotion, and athletes are never separated from the forces surrounding them.

His photography remains driven by the competitiveness that sustained him through recovery: the need to keep attempting what once seemed unreachable.

Camera Settings

Camera: DJI Mini 3 Pro
Lens: 24mm equivalent fixed lens
ISO: 150
F-Stop: 1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/4000 sec

Beatriz Ryder | Shaley Mercado at Solomon Islands

We were in one of the most remote parts of the world, the Solomon Islands, on a Rip Curl trip for "The Search."

Right in front of where we were staying was this little wave - shallow, fast, and with short, fun runners.

We didn't score the best waves on the trip, so any excuse we had to get some photos, we'd paddle out.

It was a tricky spot to swim because it was so shallow, but definitely worth every cut!

This was probably my favorite work trip I've ever done. The Solomon Islands felt so remote and untouched - some of the most disconnected, unspoiled places I've ever visited.

The trip was also special because it was an all-girls crew, with athletes of all ages and at different stages of their careers - world champions, new team members, and up-and-coming talents.

We had the best time together, and I feel very lucky to have been part of such a unique trip.

Photography gave me purpose. It helped me discover who I am, what inspires me, and the life I want to live.

What I love most is that there's no finish line - there's always more to learn in every shoot. Life moves fast, and I'm grateful to spend mine doing something that truly lights me up.

Biography

Be is a self-taught photographer from the cold waters of Portugal.

Always looking for new experiences, she found herself with the desire to explore the East Coast of Australia, where she has been living for the past few years.

With a particular interest in surf photography, she spends most of her time getting inspired by the wilderness of the ocean.

Be approaches photography with the goal of capturing the raw and dynamic nature of surfing, focusing on the emotion behind each moment.

Her work is driven by a desire to create a sense of connection between the viewer, the subject, and the ocean itself.

Although the ocean wasn't part of Be's early years, photography always was.

What began as curiosity soon became a passion and, ultimately, a lifelong pursuit.

Her journey is a testament to the transformative power of falling in love with something and chasing it with everything you've got.

Be's work has earned international recognition, with her photography featured across leading publications, global campaigns, and some of the world's most prestigious sporting events.

As an official photographer for the World Surf League (WSL), she captures defining moments from the world's most renowned surf competitions, alongside landmark events such as the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Camera Settings

Camera: Nikon Z9
Lens: 24-70mm at 30mm
ISO: 500
F-Stop: f/4
Shutter Speed: 1/4000 sec

Jason Broderick | Jeremy Burlando at Lüderitz, Namibia

Lüderitz, Namibia, has a reputation. Sitting on the southern Atlantic coast, it's one of the windiest places on earth, and this strike mission was exactly that: chasing one of the biggest storm fronts of 2025.

Fifteen-plus hours to reach this spot, with only two days of wind in the forecast. There were, of course, doubts in everyone's minds. Was the gamble worth it?

Jeremy, the 2024 World Champion, has always strayed from the conventional route, and this trip was no different.

We arrived at this stretch of remote coastline, and the nerves started to truly kick in.

The spot works with directly offshore wind, and if anything goes wrong out here, Jeremy gets pulled straight out to sea.

Why this shot is so special is that the later we shoot into the evening chasing the light, the higher the risk climbs: past a certain point, if something went wrong, Jeremy would be pulled out to sea in near-total darkness.

Jeremy found one of the perfect kickers (waves), riding along it to build line tension before he takes off.

This line tension allows for a much more vertical takeoff than a normal kiteboarding jump, which is why he's so high above the water whilst still so close to shore.

This photo is taken in the most critical moment of the trick. This is about as respected and credible as this sport gets.

I was on the beach in 50+ knot wind, sand flying waist-high across the beach, fighting the elements.

People don't realize how physically brutal shooting kiteboarding actually is. I have personally learned to embrace it, to put myself in positions most photographers wouldn't dare, because that's the only way to be 100 percent in the moment.

I'd rather a photo leave someone curious than hand them the whole answer; I'm searching for the moments between breaths, before anyone knows how the story ends.

Biography

Jason Broderick is a South African-born photographer and visual artist who has spent the last two decades in extreme sports, first as a competitive kiteboarder, and since his early teenage years as a photographer, publishing his earliest images in South Africa's kiteboarding magazine Gust at the age of 14.

He is known for prioritizing emotion and feeling over strict documentation, often manipulating the camera itself, dragging the shutter, working with motion, to place the viewer inside a moment rather than simply show it to them.

Broderick has spent recent years documenting some of extreme sports' biggest names. His guiding belief, "I don't want to capture reality; reality can be left to those who see it the way it is," has pushed him increasingly toward an experimental, analog process: waiting for a single decisive frame rather than shooting in bursts, and approaching photography more as an art form than anything else.

Most recently, he teamed up with The Speed Project to create a creative endurance art piece, "Still Moving," shooting the event's Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas ultramarathon entirely on an analog Leica M6 and developing every image from a mobile darkroom along the route.

He continues to move between commercial campaigns and long-form personal work, always in search of the quiet, human moment inside physical extremes.

Camera Settings

Camera: Fujifilm X-T5
Lens: Fujifilm XF 56mm F1.2 R
ISO: 64
F-Stop: 4,5
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec

Joshua Tabone | Jacob Turner at Teahupoo, Tahiti, French Polynesia

The photo itself was taken in Tahiti back in August 2025. I saw the swell build and develop from a few weeks out.

I watched it closely and decided to book a ticket at the last minute, flying in the day before.

The WSL event was due to start a few days later, so the whole circus was in town preparing for the event at Teahupoo - kind of a photographer's dream.

I was in the water for about eight hours each day, four days in a row, just ducking back to our boat to change batteries and memory cards and grab a quick bite to eat.

Jacob Turner is the surfer in the photograph, and I hadn't even met him until this particular day.

He was a quiet kid from Hawaii who, like me, had hopped on a plane last minute to chase some waves.

Jacob was a standout in the swell, paddling into some absolute monsters while others were towing in with jet skis.

He was pushing the limits every session, trying to get as deep as possible in the tube.

I was lucky to be in the perfect spot on this one, as there was so much water moving through the lineup that day.

When I showed Jacob the photo of him later that evening, you couldn't wipe the smile off his face with a cricket bat.

Those are the moments I love.

When I first started taking photos in the ocean, a wise man once told me, "You need to be as committed as the rider on the wave itself" - that is something that has stuck with me forever.

Biography

Joshua Tabone is an award-winning, self-taught photographer based in Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia.

He first discovered his passion for ocean photography as a teenager, famously swapping his bodyboard for a camera one day so he could capture his friends riding waves.

Over the years, Tabone has developed a reputation for documenting fleeting moments of intense bravery and natural beauty within heavy surf.

His distinctive technical approach and willingness to put himself in harm's way often result in angles and visions that are quite compelling.

Tabone's dedication to his craft has taken him all over the world, leading to collaborations with some of the biggest surfers and brands in the industry.

His striking imagery has been published in all of the best surf magazines.

Today, Josh continues to push the boundaries of surf photography, cementing his status as one of Australia's premier visual artists documenting the ocean.

Camera Settings

Camera: Canon R5
Lens: Canon RF 24-105mm
ISO: 640
F-Stop: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec

Esben Zøllner Olesen | Jamie Overbeek at Nørre Vorupør, Cold Hawaii, Denmark

This was shot at the Cold Hawaii Games, during the Red Bull King of the Air qualifier in Nørre Vorupør, on the northwest coast of Jutland, Denmark - one of the most extreme days the event has seen.

Gusts reached around 45 knots, the North Sea threw up wave after wave, and at one point the judges' tower was fully flooded by a wave rolling straight through it.

It was also a day that quietly destroyed equipment. I had three cameras out shooting, and one by one they started failing - water, wind, waves, and sand getting blown straight into the bodies.

Two of them recovered after drying out. The third, a Canon EOS R3, didn't. It died completely that day, and this image is one of the last photos it ever exposed. 

Jamie Overbeek is riding here mid-heat, in conditions he later described as some of the strongest he's competed in.

He ended up sharing 4th place overall for the day - just short of the final, but a result he was happy with given how brutal the wind was.

Most of my best shots happen because I said yes to standing somewhere uncomfortable - and to letting the surroundings become another layer alongside the light, instead of just a backdrop.

Biography

Esben was born into a family of artists, which meant a childhood surrounded by canvases, chaos, and the occasional existential crisis. Naturally, he rebelled - and enrolled in economics.

The rebellion was short-lived.

Spreadsheets, it turned out, have a narrative arc of roughly zero, and Esben's attention kept drifting toward photography instead.

He taught himself the craft, discovered it actually held his interest, and in 2010 made it official: full-time freelance photographer.

These days he lives in Odense, Denmark, with his wife and their two thoroughly adventurous boys, and works out of a suitcase across Denmark and Europe - one week photographing sports superstars mid-air, the next photographing CEOs who are considerably more grounded.

A recurring theme in his work: letting the surroundings do part of the storytelling, rather than fighting them.

When work allows it, Esben is usually somewhere outdoors doing something his insurance company would rather he didn't - snowboarding, mountain biking, or hiking, depending on the season - or, alternatively, building something onto the house that probably didn't need building.

Camera Settings

Camera: Canon EOS R3
Lens: Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM
ISO: 640
F-Stop: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec

Aaron Lynton | Rafael Tapia at Jaws/Peahi, Maui, HI, United States

On December 20, 2024, we loaded the boat at the harbor before sunrise and headed into the darkness. It was part of a five-day big-wave bender-one of the most historic runs of swell in big-wave surfing history.

Each morning brought another opportunity to witness something extraordinary, but also the pressure of knowing these moments would happen only once.

There is something truly humbling about being present when the ocean reaches this scale.

It is one thing to witness that power firsthand; it is another to anticipate the moment, compose within the chaos, and preserve it in a single frame.

For reasons I still cannot fully explain, images like this have continued to find me throughout my years of photographing the ocean.

They exist somewhere between action sports and fine art, where athletic performance becomes almost secondary to shape, light, movement, and scale.

This photograph captures the contrast that continually draws me back to big-wave surfing: a solitary human figure surrounded by overwhelming power, suspended for an instant between control and consequence.

It reveals the ocean's extraordinary balance-the fine line between beauty and destruction, stillness and violence, vulnerability and strength.

To inspire, to educate, to connect- there is nothing more powerful than creating an image that makes someone feel.

Biography

Aaron Lynton is an award-winning fine-art photographer and filmmaker based on Maui, Hawaii. His work explores the natural world through light, movement, scale, and the relationship between life and its environment.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Lynton earned a B.F.A. in Film and Television from the Savannah College of Art and Design. He is also a PADI Divemaster and F.I.I. Level 1 freediver.

Working across ocean, wildlife, landscape, astrophotography, and action sports, he is drawn to fleeting moments that reveal wonder, power, stillness, and immense scale.

Lynton's work is rooted in a deep respect for the environments he photographs. He seeks perspectives that place the viewer within the moment, using atmosphere and movement to communicate not only what a place looks like, but how it feels to be there-the wonder, stillness, vulnerability, energy, and scale of the experience.

His images seek to transport viewers, awaken memories, and deepen their connection to the natural world.

At the heart of his work is the belief that an image can do more than document. It can inspire, educate, and create connection.

There is nothing more powerful than making the viewer feel something-and, through that feeling, see the natural world differently.

Camera Settings

Camera: Canon R5 II
Lens: Canon RF 200-800mm f6.3-9 IS USM
ISO: 125
F-Stop: f / 7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec

Bertrand Lanneau | Unknown Surfer at Avalanche, Bidart, France

It was cold that day. Sea mist was everywhere. The waves, however, cared little about the surfers' visibility, rolling in with tireless perfection.

Yet, in these inhospitable conditions, the promise of an adrenaline rush had drawn a few enthusiasts into the water.

And so, their wait began.

I love photography because it allows me to freeze moments in a world where everything is in motion - to create a still image of a fleeting instant.

I enjoy losing myself in the wild or confronting nature in its raw state. When I have the opportunity to include a human presence in these landscapes, it serves to provide a sense of scale and tell a story, allowing the viewer to imagine themselves there.

Whenever possible, I try to offer a different perspective: looking left when everyone else is looking right, finding unique angles, or seeking out challenging weather conditions.

For me, that is what sets my work apart, and it is this endless quest that makes me love photography so much.

Biography

Ever since I was young, I've leafed through countless magazines and books; images have always fascinated me. I really began to take an interest in photography when I was 18, and I haven't stopped since.

What started as a simple passion turned into a profession - almost by accident.

My work evolved significantly about ten years ago when my wife and I won a competition to tour Europe in a van for six months; we subsequently published the book "Drive Your Adventure," which sold tens of thousands of copies.

With a deep respect for our planet and a passion for the great outdoors, I've always loved being outside - especially when everyone else is staying home - capturing the moments nature offers us, whether or not people are there interacting with the landscape.

Camera Settings

Camera: DJI Mavic 3
Lens: 24mm
ISO: 560
F-Stop: f/6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec

Stefan Mathers | Sebastian Steudtner at Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal

Shooting in Nazaré is always intense.

Some days just provide the most incredible moments to shoot, and it's amazing to witness the big wave surfers who go out there and catch these giant waves. 

This image in particular of Sebastian Steudtner was taken at the peak of the winter season, and we knew that it was going to be a big day out there.

Right at the beginning of the session, the first set I saw we got out there was this XXL set that came in, and the first wave was just the biggest, most perfect empty barrel, with morning light shining in the face of the wave and later on the explosion of white water.

I remember thinking all I was missing from that first sequence was the surfer; then, on the second wave of the set, Sebastian drew his line on this absolutely giant wave, one of the biggest of the season, surely.

Photography, for me, is about being in the right place when something happens that may never happen again.

I'm drawn to the ocean because it is constantly changing, unpredictable, and impossible to control.

Nazaré has taught me that you can prepare for a moment, but you can never truly know when it will arrive.

What inspires me is the feeling of witnessing something extraordinary and trying to translate that feeling into a single frame.

I'm not only interested in showing how big a wave is. I want the photograph to communicate its power, scale, movement, and emotion.

I want people to look at an image and feel, even if just for a second, what it was like to be there.

My biggest advice for other photographers is simple. Don't just chase the photograph everyone else is looking for.

Find your own way of seeing.

Study the light, understand your environment, anticipate what might happen, and be patient. Most importantly, keep showing up.

The photographs that mean the most to me have often come from being there when nobody knew exactly what was going to happen.

Photography is about preparation, patience, and timing. But sometimes, it's also about being lucky enough to witness something that only exists for a fraction of a second.

Biography

Born in Porto, I'm a Portuguese photographer.

Raised by the sea as an only child, I was always out with my friends at the beach, but while they all surfed, my passion was always the camera and the possibility of capturing the perfect moment.

Naturally, I followed my friends as they progressed, and we looked for places with bigger and better waves; then, when I saw my first "big waves," I was hooked.

I had and will always have an obsession, so I completed my Master's in Artistic Photography and have specialized in ocean and big wave photography.

I've spent almost a decade photographing the waves of Nazaré, developing an intimate understanding of one of the world's most demanding surf environments.

My photography is driven by curiosity, finding new angles, waiting for unusual conditions, and looking beyond the obvious shot.

Camera Settings

Camera: Canon R5
Lens: Canon EF85mm f1.2 II USM
ISO: 320
F-Stop:  f/7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec

The feeling of finding surf in unlikely places is second to none. Welcome to Sweden, one of the coolest - pun intended - countries to ride waves in Scandinavia.

There is a song by The Divine Comedy that goes like this: 

I would like to live in Sweden
When my work is done
Where the snow lies crisp and even
'Neath the midnight sun
Safe and clean and green and modern
Bright and breezy, free and easy
Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, in Sweden

The lyrics say it all. But what are this Nordic nation's best surf visiting cards?

Sweden's coastline faces the Skagerrak, Kattegat, Baltic Sea and Gulf of Bothnia, yet it does not receive the long, regular ocean swells that make places such as Portugal or California easy to surf.

Instead, Swedish surfers monitor the wind.

The country's waves are largely generated by local weather systems.

Strong winds create short-period wind swells, and a good session can depend on being in the right place during a narrow window of favorable conditions.

So, although wind swells don't particularly rank high in the surf forecasting reports, there's still hope.

A storm can produce waves one day (and leave the same coastline almost flat the next).

Consequently, the Swedish surfing community relies on a culture built around forecasts, geography and patience.

There are spots along much of Sweden's long coastline, but some work only a few times a year.

The best surfers are often the ones who know how to read the weather rather than simply wait for a conventional swell forecast.

How surfing developed in Sweden

Swedish surfing began to take shape in the 1980s, when a small number of surfers started exploring the country's exposed coastlines.

They rode the windsurfing boom that swept Europe that decade.

Janne Ekstedt was one of the surfing pioneers.

He discovered Torö Stenstrand near Stockholm and later founded the Swedish Surfing Association (SSA) in 1985.

The organization became responsible for developing Swedish surfing, organizing competitions and supporting Swedish surfers at international events.

Mölle, on the Kullaberg peninsula in Skåne, was another important early location. Local accounts place the development of its wave surfing scene in the 1980s.

Today, Mölle is still regarded as one of the pioneering locations in Swedish "wave surfing."

When SurferToday started in 2007, the Mölle wave was the subject of one of its first published articles, as it was about to be annihilated by wave stoppers added to the nearby harbor.

Torö and the Varberg area eventually became two of the country's main surfing centers. The Swedish Surfing Association now represents clubs and surfers across the country, including established groups in Stockholm, Varberg, Halmstad, Salusand and Österlen.

There are also reports that indicate that Swedish surfing goes back further than the 1980s.

According to accounts of the country's early surf scene, a group of skateboarders began riding waves on the west coast in the late 1970s.

Per Torstensson, Stisse Bengtsson, Micki Carlsson and Åke Gylling were among the first surfers in this early group.

They formed the Porridge Bay Surf Club, created a club logo, and even produced their own T-shirts.

Grötvik and Sandhamn became important early locations for this small group of pioneers.

At the time, the waves were largely uncrowded, and the idea of surfing in Sweden was still unusual.

So, it appears that a small west coast scene was already experimenting with waves several years earlier, while the 1980s brought greater organization and a wider national identity to the sport.

Why Sweden gets waves

Sweden's geography explains almost everything. The western coastline faces the Skagerrak and Kattegat.

The Baltic lies to the east and south, while the Gulf of Bothnia extends north between Sweden and Finland.

Sweden's surrounding seas have very different depths, salinity, and exposure.

The Skagerrak is relatively deep and connected to the North Sea, while the Kattegat is much shallower.

The western coast can receive swell generated farther out in the Skagerrak, particularly during strong southwesterly weather.

Rocky islands and skerries along the coast create many sheltered areas, which means that finding the right exposed beach, reef or point can make a big difference.

Further south, the Kattegat is shallow and depends heavily on wind generated over relatively short distances.

Strong southwesterly, westerly and northwesterly winds can build useful waves, but the same wind that creates the swell can also make conditions messy.

The Baltic works differently again.

Storm systems can generate easterly, southeasterly and southerly windswells, giving surfers around Skåne, Gotland, Öland and the Stockholm region opportunities when the weather lines up.

Further north, the Gulf of Bothnia provides another unusual surfing environment.

Its long north-to-south fetch can generate waves during the warmer part of the year, while winter ice eventually limits access to the water.

Sweden's northern coastline includes spots such as Salusand, Smitingen, Härnösand and Skelleftehamn.

In total, the original surf sources estimate roughly 75 small but rideable days a year across Sweden's coasts.

That figure should be treated as a rough surfing estimate rather than a scientific count, but it captures the country's main characteristic: consistency is rare.

When to surf in Sweden

Autumn is usually the season to watch.

September through November offers a useful combination of strengthening storms and relatively mild water.

Winter can produce some of the strongest conditions, particularly when deep low-pressure systems cross the region, but the cold becomes a serious factor.

Summer is generally unreliable for wave surfing.

Small waves can appear during a passing storm in June, July or August, but they may disappear almost as quickly as they arrive.

In other words, surfing in Sweden is definitely a very cold water experience that one should embrace with a good dose of will, passion and perseverance.

The water temperature changes dramatically through the year.

The supplied surf material puts summer temperatures around 15 to 20 °C, falling to roughly 10 °C by late October and around 4 °C in December.

Modern Swedish monitoring shows just how cold some areas can become.

During January and February 2026, surface water in the Kattegat was measured at around 2 to 4 °C, while the Skagerrak ranged between 4 and 8 °C.

Across Sweden's monitored marine areas, recent national data recorded winter surface temperatures around 2 to 3.5 °C and summer maxima around 18 to 19 °C.

That makes neoprene more than a comfort issue. For winter surfing, a thick wetsuit, boots, gloves, and a hood are essential.

Current Swedish surf equipment recommendations include hooded 5/4 mm suits for winter, but we surely recommend going considerably thicker, with 6/7 mm or even more for the coldest January and February sessions.

The wind also matters because a cold air temperature combined with strong wind can make a session feel considerably colder than the water temperature alone suggests.

On this topic, we truly suggest a read on actual vs. feel-like temperature, and the wind chill chart.

Tides are another unusual feature.

Tidal range is relatively small on the Swedish west coast and minimal in the Baltic, so the wind and resulting swell are usually much more important factors when deciding where to surf.

Where to surf

Torö Stenstrand

If Sweden has a spot that most traveling surfers will hear about, it is Torö Stenstrand.

The beach is about an hour south of central Stockholm and has become one of the country's best-known wave-riding spots.

Its exposed position on the Baltic allows it to collect storm-generated swell, particularly during easterly and southerly weather.

Torö was once a secret known to a small group of Swedish surfers, something that changed as information about the spot spread and the country's surfing community grew.

On good days, the lineup can become crowded, with as many as 80 surfers in the water. Unbelievable for a Swedish surfing arena, don't you think?

The long pebbly beach faces south into the Baltic.

Different sections of the beach can behave differently, with the western part offering strong exposure and rocky sections producing more defined waves.

Torö is also a good example of the Swedish surfing problem: a promising forecast doesn't guarantee a long session.

A storm can generate a substantial swell, but if the wind changes direction, the quality can disappear quickly.

Varberg and the west coast

Varberg is often described as Sweden's surf capital, and it has perhaps the country's most developed surf infrastructure.

The town sits on the Kattegat coast south of Gothenburg.

Its open bays can collect wind-generated waves, while a long-established surf culture has created shops, schools, clubs and accommodation aimed at water sports.

There are three main wave surfing locations around Varberg: Apelviken, Kåsa and Träslövsläge, commonly known as Läjet.

Local tourism authorities currently describe all three as established surfing locations, with Kåsa better suited to more experienced wave surfers and Apelviken and Träslövsläge offering conditions for a wider range of abilities.

Apelviken

Apelviken is a large sandy bay south of Varberg and one of the main centers of Swedish surfing.

The beach has a gentle bottom and offers several different areas for water sports. Beginners can find smaller waves and surf schools, while stronger winds can produce more demanding conditions.

The bay is also heavily associated with windsurfing and kitesurfing. When the wind is strong, all three sports can share the same stretch of coastline.

Local authorities warn that currents can become dangerous during windy conditions, so surfers should check the day's conditions before entering the water.

Kåsa

Kåsa, also known as Lilla Apelviken, is a smaller beach close to Varberg's center.

It is more exposed to westerly and northwesterly winds and can produce steeper, faster waves than the softer sections of Apelviken. West seems to be the preferred wind direction.

Kåsa is therefore better suited to surfers who are comfortable dealing with stronger, faster waves.

Träslövsläge

South of Apelviken is Träslövsläge - hard to spell if you're a foreigner, right? - usually called Läjet by local surfers.

It is a large sandy bay where conditions vary considerably with wind strength and direction.

The spot is particularly popular with longboarders, although stronger southwesterly winds can produce waves suitable for shorter boards.

The combination of space, sand and relatively accessible conditions has made Läjet an important part of the Varberg surf scene.

Mölle

We've mentioned it above. Mölle sits beneath the Kullaberg cliffs in northwestern Skåne.

The main wave breaks around the harbor and is one of Sweden's most historic surf locations. It is a storm-dependent wave, requiring strong weather systems to generate enough wind and fetch.

When the conditions arrive, Mölle can produce short lefts and rights around its rocky shoreline.

The setting is spectacular, but the wave is not a beginner spot.

Shallow rocks, the harbor entrance, and boat traffic leave little room for mistakes, so it is recommended for experienced surfers.

Mölle also reminds you how different Swedish surfing can be from the conventional beach break you find in California or France.

The coastline is rocky, the waves are generated by storms, and the window between too little swell and too much wind can be surprisingly short.

Knäbäckshusen and the Skåne coast

Knäbäckshusen lies on the southeastern coast of Skåne, close to Stenshuvud.

It is a long sandy beach with a relatively shallow seabed. Baltic wind swells can produce small, shaped waves, especially during the colder months.

The waves are rarely powerful, which makes a high-volume surfboard useful when conditions are small.

The beach is also known for the traditional houses along the coast, giving the area a very different character from the exposed rocky spots around Mölle.

Knäbäckshusen is one of the favorite lineups among surfers in Skåne and Malmö, alongside Vik.

Gotland and Fårö

Gotland sits roughly in the middle of the Baltic Sea and has an unusually large number of potential surf locations for an island of its size.

The island has around 800 kilometers of coastline, with Kovik, Ekeviken, Faludden and Gnisvärd among the most popular surf breaks.

Fårö, at the northern end of Gotland, also has several exposed beaches.

Ekeviken on Fårö is particularly exposed to northerly winds and can produce larger waves when strong northern weather moves across the Baltic.

Gotland's east coast is generally the side to watch when the wind direction lines up with the available fetch.

Swedish surf trips often require a ferry to reach a remote wave, a long drive, and then another search for the correct section of coastline where magic happens.

Öland and the Baltic islands

Öland, off Sweden's southeastern coast, is another option when Baltic storms generate useful windswell.

The island has beaches and rocky sections exposed to several directions, which gives surfers more options when the wind changes.

Conditions remain inconsistent, but the island can produce good waves during the right storm.

For surfers based around Stockholm, the wider archipelago offers a similar forecasting game.

Torö is the better-known option, while other islands can produce waves when large low-pressure systems move across the Baltic.

The far north

Sweden's northern coastline is easy to overlook, but the Gulf of Bothnia can produce surf.

The available fetch becomes particularly interesting here.

A roughly 600-kilometer north-to-south stretch of open water can let strong winds build waves during autumn and summer weather systems.

Known locations include Salusand, Smitingen, Härnösand and Skelleftehamn. Finland has its own spots on the opposite side of the Gulf, including Mäntyluoto, Yyteri and Tulliniementie.

The season is limited by the climate.

Ice develops across parts of the Gulf during winter, making the northern surf window considerably shorter than on Sweden's southern coasts.

But all this is part of the appeal of telling your friends and family that you've surfed Scandinavia.

And the cool thing is - apologies for the recurring use of the pun, but we couldn't resist it - there is always another coastline to watch when the local forecast goes flat.

Just make sure to check the wind before you go. Trevlig surfing!

Words by Luís MP | Founder of SurferToday.com

As a surfer, you might not have thought about this, but walking is one of the simplest forms of exercise. Actually, it can be much more than a way to stay active between your sessions.

Done regularly, especially on hills and uneven terrain, walking and hiking can improve cardiovascular fitness, leg endurance, balance, coordination, and recovery, all of which contribute to better surfing.

The interesting part is that you do not need to run, lift heavy weights, or spend hours in a gym to train many of the physical qualities that surfing demands.

We at SurferToday.com have been digging into the benefits of parallel sports that can build an up-to-date fitness level and get you ready for the most challenging winter days out the back.

Swimming, rock climbing, and running are some of our favorite non-surf-related activities when we're out of the seawater.

But we easily walk every day, can't we? Curious to see how it can work beautifully for you?

Walking builds the engine behind surfing

A surf session may contain several explosive moments, but let's be honest: much of the time is spent paddling, repositioning, sitting, and waiting.

That means surfers benefit from having a good aerobic base, which helps the body produce energy efficiently and recover between harder efforts.

Brisk walking at a pace of 3 to 4.5 miles per hour (4.8 to 7.2 kilometers per hour) can contribute to that aerobic conditioning without the repetitive impact associated with running.

Hiking can provide an even stronger stimulus, particularly when the route includes sustained climbs.

The steeper the trail, the more work your heart, lungs, and leg muscles have to perform.

In other words, a hill is one of the simplest ways to turn an ordinary walk into a much harder workout without necessarily walking faster.

Interesting, right?

Your legs do more than you think

Surfing is often associated with paddling strength, but the lower body determines much of what happens once you are standing on the board.

Your legs constantly absorb movement, adjust your position, and transfer weight between the front and back of the board.

Strong, fatigue-resistant legs help you stay stable and controlled as a session progresses.

Hiking develops this capacity because climbing requires repeated work from the quadriceps, calves, and glutes.

Descending is particularly interesting. Walking downhill forces your muscles to control your body rather than simply propel it forward.

It's a type of eccentric muscle work that helps absorb force and control movement.

In other words, going downhill is not simply the easy part of the hike. Your muscles are doing a different kind of work.

Uneven ground is a balance workout

A perfectly flat pavement gives your nervous system very little to solve.

A rocky trail is different. Every irregular step requires tiny adjustments involving the feet, ankles, knees, hips, and trunk.

Your brain constantly receives information about where your body is and how the ground is changing underneath it.

That ability, known as proprioception, has an obvious parallel in surfing.

A surfboard is an unstable platform, and surfers continually make small corrections to maintain balance and control with their hips, muscles, and even toes.

Hiking does not reproduce the movements of a surfboard, but it gives your balance system plenty of low-risk practice responding to an unpredictable surface.

Walking can improve your surfing endurance

Another connection is easy to overlook.

A surfer may start a session feeling powerful and finish it struggling to maintain good technique and nice performance levels.

Fatigue changes how effectively you move around in the lineup, paddle, and control the board.

Walking and hiking improve general muscular endurance, particularly in the legs. A long hike does not teach you how to perform a cutback, but it can help your body tolerate prolonged physical work.

And if you reflect on what you do in the water, surfing is rarely one big effort. It is a collection of repeated efforts separated by periods of lower intensity.

A better aerobic system will help you recover between those efforts.

Think of walking as training the battery

Yes, it is obvious that walking doesn't specifically strengthen the muscles used for paddling the way swimming or paddling drills do.

Its contribution is, shall we say, more general. Now, think of your body as having an engine and a battery.

Surf-specific exercises can make the engine better at producing the movements you need.

Walking and hiking can improve the underlying aerobic system that lets you keep producing those efforts and recover from them.

That is why walking works particularly well as complementary training rather than as a replacement for surfing.

Hiking also trains the hips

Strong hips matter for athletic movement because they connect the powerful muscles of the legs to the trunk.

Climbing activates the glutes and other muscles around the hips, while uneven terrain forces them to stabilize the body as you move.

That applies well to you, dear surfer, during movements that involve standing up, absorbing the force of a wave, and driving through turns.

You won't develop a powerful bottom turn simply by hiking, but stronger, more fatigue-resistant supporting muscles give you a better physical foundation for those movements.

Unusually easy to recover from

Interestingly, one of walking's greatest advantages is what it does not do.

It usually doesn't create the same impact and recovery demands as running or high-intensity conditioning.

Therefore, it makes it possible to accumulate a significant amount of physical activity without turning every training day into a hard training day.

And that's great news, right?

Indeed. Surfing itself can already place substantial demands on the shoulders, back, and legs, so we also deserve a rest, here and there.

A long walk on a non-surf day can therefore add conditioning without necessarily competing with the next session.

Walking after a meal

We love this one and are keen enthusiasts. A short, easy walk after eating can also be a useful habit.

Light activity after a meal can help the body handle the rise in blood glucose that follows eating, while providing some gentle movement without the demands of a workout.

It does not need to become a hike. Even a relaxed walk can turn sitting immediately after a meal into a few minutes of useful activity.

And because everything now gets a name, there's the so-called "fart walk" or, in scientific terminology, postprandial walking.

It's a great way to trigger digestion and reduce bloating.

So there you go: the simplest surf workout is outside the water.

Walking and hiking will not replace your time in the surf, but will help build your aerobic foundation and are an unusually efficient form of cross-training.

Words by Luís MP | Founder of SurferToday.com

The wave pool industry is heading into a legal battle.

American Wave Machines, the California company behind PerfectSwell, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against WhiteWater West Industries, the Canadian company behind Endless Surf.

The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida and concerns WhiteWater's Endless Surf wave-generation system, including a project currently under construction in Fellsmere, Florida.

AWM says the lawsuit is intended to protect its patented technology and the investment behind the development of PerfectSwell.

"Surf venues thrive on originality, authenticity, and significant engineering investment," AWM President Bruce McFarland said.

"While we welcome the continued growth of the category, that growth must respect the intellectual property rights of those who pioneered this space."

According to AWM, the legal action concerns U.S. Patent Nos. 9,279,263 and 8,434,966, which cover aspects of pneumatic and sequenced wave-generation technology.

AWM alleges that aspects of WhiteWater's Endless Surf system infringe those patents.

A dispute over pneumatic wave technology

Both PerfectSwell and Endless Surf use pneumatic technology to generate waves. The systems use multiple chambers and controlled sequences of air and water to create programmable surf conditions.

The technology allows wave pools to produce different wave shapes and sizes without relying on naturally occurring ocean swells.

The dispute, however, is not about whether pneumatic wave generation exists.

It concerns specific technologies and processes that AWM says are protected by its patents.

One of the projects affected by the lawsuit is a 10.5-acre surf park under construction in Fellsmere, near Sebastian Inlet.

The development is expected to use an Endless Surf ES36 system equipped with 36 wave-generating chambers.

If completed as planned, the project would become the first Endless Surf lagoon in the United States.

WhiteWater rejects the allegations

WhiteWater has rejected AWM's claims and said it intends to defend itself in court.

Endless Surf said it "firmly rejects" the infringement allegations and will "vigorously defend itself."

WhiteWater also disputes the validity of the patents at the center of the case.

The company argues that the underlying concepts were known and used before AWM entered the wave-generation industry and that the patents "should never have been granted."

Those are WhiteWater's allegations. The court has not yet ruled on the validity of the patents or whether Endless Surf infringes them.

WhiteWater also said its history in wave-generation technology extends back more than four decades and argued that the development of wave pools predates AWM's involvement in the industry.

The company characterized the lawsuit as part of a broader pattern of legal disputes involving AWM and said that technological innovation, partnerships and completed projects, rather than litigation, determine leadership in the sector.

WhiteWater also told clients that Endless Surf projects, including the Fellsmere development, will continue.

A longer-running patent dispute

The lawsuit is not the first legal dispute between the two companies.

WhiteWater began challenging several AWM patents in 2022, and related disputes have also taken place in Europe.

AWM says reviews conducted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ultimately upheld three of the challenged patents in full and most claims of a fourth.

The new lawsuit brings the dispute directly into the growing commercial surf park market, where several competing technologies are being used to produce artificial waves.

For AWM, the case is about protecting intellectual property developed during the creation of PerfectSwell.

"These legal actions are necessary to protect our patented technology, the investments behind it, and a fair and lawful marketplace for original inventors," McFarland said.

The case will now determine whether the patents asserted by AWM are enforceable and whether WhiteWater's Endless Surf technology infringes them.

Its outcome could have implications for the competing wave-generation technologies being developed and deployed as the global surf park industry continues to expand.

Forever, surf movies have relied on a simple idea: put a camera in the best possible position and point it at the surfer.

That position might be on the beach, in the channel, on a boat, or, when conditions allow, inside the barrel.

Apple Immersive Video wants to change the relationship between the camera and the person watching.

At Teahupoo, Red Bull and Apple have taken that idea much further.

Their new production, "World of Red Bull: Big Wave Surfing," was filmed specifically for Apple Vision Pro, with cameras placed in positions normally occupied by surfers and specialist water crews.

The result is designed to make the viewer feel less like an observer watching a surf film and more like someone sitting in the lineup.

The camera becomes the viewer

The most important difference is not simply that the footage is sharper or wider. It is where the camera is placed.

Conventional surf footage is usually composed for a rectangular screen.

The filmmaker chooses what the audience should see and places the surfer within that frame.

Apple Immersive Video changes that relationship because the camera's position becomes the viewer's position.

At Teahupoo, cameras were placed on a boat, in the channel, and inside the breaking wave.

The production therefore had to solve a different problem from conventional surf cinematography.

The team was no longer looking for a good angle from which to film the action. It had to find positions that would work as places for the viewer to experience the wave.

It's something dear to Teahupoo, where the scale and speed of the wave can be difficult to communicate when the action is viewed from a distance.

A surfer dropping into a barrel can look small on a conventional screen even when the wave is moving with enormous force around them.

Immersive filming puts the audience much closer to that relationship between surfer and wave.

The viewer can see the athlete in relation to the surrounding water rather than simply watching a surfer move across a frame.

Why 8K and 3D matter in the barrel

The production uses stereoscopic 3D imagery recorded in 8K, with a 180-degree field of view.

Those specifications matter because the footage has to create a convincing sense of space rather than simply deliver a larger picture.

The 3D capture establishes depth between the surfer, the wave, and the environment. The 180-degree field of view also shows much more of the scene surrounding the camera than a conventional television frame.

That changes the way a barrel can be presented.

Instead of seeing only the part of the wave selected by the filmmaker, the viewer experiences a much larger portion of the environment around the camera.

The physical position of the camera therefore becomes part of the story.

Spatial audio adds another layer.

Sound is positioned around the viewer rather than being presented simply as a conventional soundtrack, helping locate the ocean environment in relation to the image.

Getting the camera into the right place

Putting a camera inside or immediately beside a powerful breaking wave is difficult enough for conventional filming.

Immersive video makes the problem considerably more demanding because the camera is effectively carrying the viewer with it.

One of the biggest technical challenges was stabilization.

Footage recorded from a moving boat can contain constant movement that might be acceptable in ordinary action footage but becomes much more noticeable when the viewer experiences the camera as their own position.

The production therefore used a stabilized gimbal system on the boat.

Its purpose was to reduce the movement of the platform so that the viewer could experience the perspective of being in the channel without constantly feeling the motion of the boat.

Water presented another problem.

A conventional surf camera can sometimes survive a splash that only affects part of the image.

With an immersive camera, water on the lens can interfere with a much larger portion of what the viewer sees.

That meant the camera operators had to think carefully about their position relative to the breaking wave.

They needed to get close enough to capture the scale and movement of Teahupoo while keeping the lens clear.

Mike Prickett, owner of Salt + Air Studios, which worked with Apple and Red Bull on the project, described the difficulty in simple terms.

"Any little shake and you lose the viewer," he said.

Surf shooting: a waiting game

The technology could not make Teahupoo produce the right wave on demand.

The crew spent several weeks on the water waiting for swell, wind and light to line up. Having the surfers, cameras and production teams ready did not guarantee that the right filming opportunity would arrive.

So, it all made preparation a central part of the project.

The camera system had to be tested and engineered before the right conditions appeared because there might be only a limited window in which everything could be put into position.

The production involved research, testing and engineering by Salt + Air Studios, Apple and Red Bull, with the equipment designed to operate in salt water, breaking surf and rapidly changing conditions.

A different way to watch a surfer

The technology also changes what the audience can understand about surfing.

When an athlete is filmed from a distance, the surfer can become visually separated from the wave.

The viewer sees the maneuver, but the relationship between the surfer and the moving water can be harder to appreciate.

At Teahupoo, the immersive perspective brings that relationship much closer.

A sequence filmed from the channel can place the viewer beside the breaking wave, while footage captured inside the barrel offers a position that is normally reserved for the surfer and the camera crew.

That extra spatial information can make the timing and positioning of the surfer easier to appreciate.

A movement that might look simple on a conventional screen can be seen alongside the rapidly changing shape and movement of the wave.

It also gives the audience a better sense of proximity.

The technology is designed to communicate not only what the surfer is doing, but where the surfer is doing it and how much water is moving around them.

Slow motion had to be rethought

Even slow motion required development for the project.

Slow-motion surf footage is already a familiar part of surf filmmaking, but immersive video adds another technical requirement. The sequence still has to work as a spatial experience when viewed through Vision Pro.

The production team therefore developed slow-motion sequences as part of its research and testing, combining high-resolution stereoscopic capture with equipment capable of operating close to breaking waves.

That illustrates a broader change in surf filmmaking - the technology does not simply provide filmmakers with a new camera.

It changes the requirements of the finished footage because every movement of the camera, every splash and every decision about its position can affect the person watching it.

The surfers filmed at Teahupoo

Nine surfers were filmed for "World of Red Bull: Big Wave Surfing," including Teahupoo specialists and current and former Championship Tour (CT) athletes.

The group includes Michel Bourez, Molly Picklum, Lucas “Chumbo” Chianca, Ítalo Ferreira, João Chianca, Jack Robinson, Aelan Vaast, Matahi Drollet and Eimeo Czermak.

Their different connections to Teahupoo also give the production access to a range of surfing experiences at one of the world's most demanding waves.

For Italo Ferreira, the technology offers people who may never surf Teahupoo an opportunity to experience something closer to the sensation of being there.

“When you consider how many people dream of visiting the beach and simply dipping their toes in the ocean, the idea of surfing a barrel at Teahupoo is truly immense,” Ferreira said.

"Technology can help give these people a sense of what that feeling is like; it is a truly memorable experience."

"World of Red Bull: Big Wave Surfing" launches on Apple Vision Pro through the Apple TV app on October 2, 2026.

Believe it or not, many places describe themselves as "the birthplace of surfing." The thing is, they aren't all making the same claim.

Some mean the birthplace of surfing itself; others mean the birthplace of modern surfing, the birthplace of surfing in a particular country, or simply the place where surfing culture began locally.

The truth is there is no universally accepted single birthplace of surfing.

Surprised? Don't be. Sadly, or maybe not, historians have never found the necessary proof that this or that place holds that grand honor.

The historical picture is actually pretty much complicated. All research, academic review, and studies lead to an inconclusive conclusion.

No one knows where the act of riding a wave and standing up began, or why it happened. We have hints, some more solid than others.

And they all leave a glimpse of imagination for those curious and interested in the genesis of such a magical, spiritual, and entertaining practice.

Some even put it on a metaphysical, quasi-religious level.

Let's look at the places that make the strongest claim to where this ancient outdoor desire first saw the light of day.

Hawaii: the classic “birthplace of surfing”

This is by far the most established modern claim.

Hawaii's own tourism authorities describe surfing as having literally begun as the "Sport of Kings," with ancient Hawaiian royalty surfing at Waikiki and elsewhere.

Surfing existed elsewhere in Polynesia and possibly independently elsewhere, but Hawaiians developed wave riding into an extraordinarily elaborate cultural practice.

Different boards were associated with different types of riding and social status, and surfing was embedded in Hawaiian religion, politics, competition, and daily life.

Academic historian Isaiah Helekunihi Walker's work on Hawaiian surfing emphasizes that the practice has centuries-old roots in Hawaiian culture and challenges the old popular narrative that surfing simply disappeared and was later "resurrected" by Westerners.

The University of Hawaii's educational material makes the same important distinction: the exact origin of surfing is unknown, but European explorers documented wave riding throughout Polynesia, including Tahiti, the Marquesas, New Zealand, Micronesia, and Hawaii.

So the strongest historically defensible formulation is probably that Hawaii is the birthplace of modern surfing culture, rather than necessarily the birthplace of the first human ever to ride a wave.

Hawaii itself, however, officially embraces the broader claim.

The Hawaii Tourism Authority currently describes Hawaii as the "birthplace of surfing."

Waikiki: the birthplace of modern surfing

This is a more precise claim than saying the entire Hawaiian Islands invented surfing.

Waikiki Beach became the great bridge between ancient Hawaiian he'e nalu and the global sport.

Public Hawaiian documents state that historians regard Waikiki as the "birthplace of modern surfing," while noting that surfing already existed at hundreds of locations throughout the Hawaiian Islands.

Waikiki was particularly important because it became the meeting point between traditional Hawaiian surfing, tourism, the Waikiki Beach Boys, George Freeth, Duke Kahanamoku, surf instruction, exhibitions, and eventually international surf culture.

Duke Kahanamoku and other Hawaiian surfers subsequently demonstrated surfing in California, Australia, and elsewhere, helping transform a Hawaiian cultural practice into an international sport.

French Polynesia/Tahiti: another genuine ancient-origin claim

French Polynesia's official tourism organization explicitly calls the islands "the birthplace of surfing."

It says surfing is the oldest sport practiced in the Islands of Tahiti and describes Polynesian royalty riding wooden boards.

The claim has historical logic because Tahiti was part of the wider Polynesian world in which wave riding developed long before European contact.

It would therefore be misleading to portray Tahiti and Hawaii as simply competing claims for exactly the same thing.

The more accurate interpretation would be that Tahiti is claiming a place in the ancient Polynesian origin of surfing; Hawaii claims the extraordinary development and later globalization of that tradition.

Northern Peru: the most interesting rival to the Polynesian origin story

Now, here's what could probably be the most fascinating alternative to the conventional Polynesian story.

The focus is northern Peru, especially Huanchaco.

Peruvian archaeological evidence shows that people have used caballitos de totora, small reed watercraft, for thousands of years.

Modern Peruvian surf historians argue that fishermen rode these craft through and back over waves and therefore qualify as some of the world's earliest surfers.

Peru's official tourism organization explicitly presents this argument.

The Australian National Maritime Museum recently described the evidence from Peru as potentially representing "the birth of wave riding" and a precursor to surfing, dating the caballito de totora tradition to around 3,000 BC.

Huanchaco's World Surfing Reserve status also emphasizes its thousands-of-years-old wave-riding tradition and the continuing use of the caballitos.

There is, however, an important qualification.

The Peruvian fishermen were using a watercraft, rather than a surfboard in the Hawaiian sense.

Some historians therefore call it ancient wave riding rather than proof that Peru invented modern surfing.

Still, the archaeological evidence makes Peru impossible to dismiss from any serious discussion of surfing's origins.

West Africa, especially Ghana: the earliest written account?

Ready for a very different argument?

Research by historian Kevin Dawson has uncovered a 1640s account from what is now Ghana describing children being put on boards in the water.

A later account from 1679 described children at Elmina riding small boards or bundles of reeds, and a 19th-century account describes boys in Accra waiting for surf and riding the waves.

It's a valid claim because the conventional surf-history narrative traditionally says that the first written description of surfing came from Captain Cook's voyages to Hawaii in the 1770s.

The Ghanaian evidence predates that by more than a century.

But there is another important divergence. The earliest written description is not necessarily the earliest occurrence of surfing.

Dawson's work suggests that West Africans had developed their own wave-riding traditions independently. The wider evidence includes Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Liberia and parts of western Central Africa.

So Ghana is better described as one of the strongest candidates for the earliest documented written evidence of wave riding.

That is different from proving Ghana was the birthplace of surfing. But it is still exciting to think about.

China: an unexpected ancient candidate

Now, here's one that is much less widely known.

The location is the Qiantang River near Hangzhou, where an enormous tidal bore creates waves that can reach several meters.

Research by surfing historian Nicola Zanella uncovered Chinese literary and artistic references suggesting that people were riding the tidal bore as far back as the Song dynasty, roughly 960-1279 AD.

The activity was sufficiently established that emperors reportedly watched the spectacle and poets wrote about the people riding the local Qiantang tidal bore.

It's one of the most exciting findings because a scholarly review of the origins of surfing lists China alongside Polynesia, Peru, and western Africa as one of the four areas where evidence of archaic surfing before 1800 has been identified.

But again, this is not evidence that China invented Hawaiian-style surfing, or any other form of riding the wave.

It is evidence that humans independently learned to ride moving waves in different parts of the world.

Although we might never know how it all started, these factual conclusions are enough for our minds to navigate the idea of what it was like to glide the seawater mountains hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago.

Words by Luís MP | Founder of SurferToday.com

Vanity is depicted as one of humanity's original sins in the Garden of Eden because of pride and self-importance.

And there is a reason why. It's because it's deeply rooted in our nature.

Interestingly, surfing exposes all the elements of vanity very well. In other words, there's a lot to explore in order to show off.

Every surfer has their own style, wave-reading skills, power, commitment, aerial and barrel-riding talent, consistency, creativity, and aura.

You can build all of this over time, with the help of modern tools like social media and video content.

You cannot be immune to the waves of a core lord who knows what they're doing; it's too much in-your-face to ignore.

The concept of a core lord is not new, even though it has been in the mouth of (too) many surf fans lately.

However, it's interesting to get deeper into why these nearly untouchable maestros of the waves seem to attract so many people.

What are the many faces of a core lord?

The first thing we need to dissect is the essence of surfing's lords of the core.

What are they exactly? How did they reach that status? Who decided they happen to be the masters of the wave-riding universe?

At its most basic, a core lord is an extremely committed, hardcore surfer who embodies what a particular surf community considers "core" surf culture.

The word "core" refers to being deeply embedded in surfing rather than treating it as a casual lifestyle activity.

"Lord" adds an exaggerated sense of status or authority. So the literal idea is essentially "the lord of being core."

I believe you may follow this assumption. Fair enough, right?

But we can go into deeper layers of this analysis. Stick with me, dear reader.

Here's a relevant detail: being technically good isn't necessarily enough.

For instance, a surfer can be an excellent competitive surfer and still not be perceived as particularly "core."

And the other way around is also valid: a relatively anonymous surfer who surfs twice a day, travels for a living, rides unusual boards, charges impossible and unusual waves, and is deeply immersed in surf culture may be considered extremely core.

The older usage appears to be closely connected to the idea of the hardcore surfer.

The term is usually associated with surfing obsessively rather than recreationally, taking on super hard or consequential waves, having strong surf forecasting knowledge, commitment to a local break or community, free surfing their brains out with distinctive style and alternative equipment, and resisting commercialization.

For this type of surfer, the important word here is commitment.

More than the idea that "He's a really good surfer," it's closer to the acknowledgment that "surfing is central to this person's life."

Also, a core lord does not necessarily mean famous. Underground surfers who never received much mainstream exposure can actually fit very well in this category.

The 1990s and 2000s connection

There seems to be a strong contemporary association between "core lord" culture and 1990s/early-2000s surfing.

Remember those raw VHS videos featuring people like Sunny Garcia, Johnny "Boy" Gomez, Christian Fletcher, Brad Gerlach, and Matt Archbold?

They owned it.

They gravitated around an idea of alternative surf magazines, beat-up surfboards, obscure surf brands, heavy rail surfing, deep barrels, local surf shops, alternative music, punk, skate culture, and an anti-corporate attitude.

So aesthetics mattered and still matter.

Then, with all this, there's the territorialist component.

Localism matters

The core lord is strongly associated with localism.

The stereotype is the local surfer who believes that his knowledge of a particular break gives him authority over everyone else.

It can involve deciding who deserves waves, policing outsiders, yelling at beginners, enforcing unwritten rules, demanding respect, establishing hierarchy in the lineup, protecting a local break from crowds.

A disclaimer here, before it's too late: this doesn't mean that all localism is automatically associated with being a core lord.

There is a legitimate distinction between surf etiquette and local knowledge and aggressive territorial behavior.

Core lords and surf elitism

There is obviously an inherent tension here.

Surfing has historically celebrated the idea of being outside the mainstream, and that creates a strange paradox:

The more someone tries to prove that they are outside the mainstream, the more they can become part of another mainstream within surf culture.

And this brings us to the satirical side that surrounds the concept of core lord: the person who complains about "kooks" can become just as stereotypical as the person they're criticizing.

A plausible definition

So, if we had to define the term that is relatively new to surfing, here's an essay of what it could be:

A core lord is a deeply committed, highly "core," subtly self-entitled surfer who embodies the underground, hardcore, and often anti-mainstream side of surf culture.

The term can be admiring when referring to a surfer's commitment, ability, style, and authenticity, or sarcastic when referring to a territorial, elitist, or gatekeeping surfer who believes he represents the "real" culture of and within surfing.

A core lord could be seen claiming or no-claiming a perfect ride. Both scenarios are expected. And it could be something that simply doesn't exist.

One thing we know: never call yourself a core lord. It will not end well.

Words by Luís MP | Founder of SurferToday.com

The pop culture industry has thoroughly explored the semiotics of surfing. And in comics, we can easily find these appropriations in more or less literal ways.

Waverider is one of those comic book characters whose name tells you almost everything you need to know.

But it can also be misleading. In other words, he is a surfer, but there is no ocean beneath his feet.

How could that be?

Created by writer Archie Goodwin and artist Dan Jurgens, Waverider first appeared in DC Comics' "Armageddon 2001," issue #1, in May 1991.

His real name is Matthew Ryder, a scientist who lives in a possible future where Earth has fallen under the rule of a powerful figure known as Monarch.

Ryder wants to stop that future before it happens.

His solution is suitably (comic-book) strange: he volunteers for an experiment involving time travel and enters the timestream.

He doesn't come back the same man, though. Shall we see how this unexpectedly different surfer comes to life?

Riding the timestream

So, the experiment gives Ryder powerful temporal abilities. He emerges as Waverider, a being who can move through time and investigate possible futures.

And this is where the name starts to make sense.

To be clear, Waverider does not ride an ocean wave - he rides the waves of time. The timestream is treated almost like a vast moving medium.

Waverider can enter it, move through it, and observe events at different points in history. His powers also allow him to examine possible futures, which becomes central to his first story.

In "Armageddon 2001," Waverider travels through the lives of DC superheroes to discover who will eventually become Monarch.

His mission is to identify the threat before the future he knows can take place.

Our character plays an unusual role.

He is not simply a time traveler who visits famous moments in history. He is trying to understand how one possible future can grow out of the present.

A superpower built around time

Waverider's abilities are closely tied to the timestream.

One of his most distinctive powers is the ability to see a person's probable future by touching them.

During "Armageddon 2001," he uses this ability to examine various DC heroes while searching for the future Monarch.

He can also travel through time and observe different possible outcomes, making him an unusual kind of superhero.

His greatest tool is information. He can look ahead and see where events may be heading, then use what he discovers to try to change history.

There is an obvious problem with that idea, and the story plays with it.

Waverider eventually discovers that his own attempt to prevent Monarch's rise has been manipulated. His journey through time is part of the chain of events he is trying to break.

Therefore, as a time traveler, our character gets himself involved in a particularly awkward situation.

Where does the wave come from?

The surfing imagery becomes more interesting when Waverider is drawn in action.

He is often shown moving on a flowing, wave-shaped energy form associated with his travel through the timestream.

It can look surprisingly similar to a surfboard beneath his feet, especially in artwork that emphasizes his movement through temporal energy.

A parenthesis is needed here, though.

Waverider does not traditionally carry a physical board like a surfer heading into the lineup.

The wave is part of the visual representation of his powers. It gives his movement through time a shape that readers can immediately understand.

Like an endless longboard - or carpet or blanket - that extends its core through time. Hard to picture, right?

The character therefore turns an abstract idea into something visual. Why? Because time is difficult to draw; a wave is much easier.

So, in a way, it's a rather clever and philosophical fit for a character called Waverider.

Instead of showing Matthew Ryder simply disappearing into a glowing portal whenever he travels through time, artists can show him riding a wave through the timestream.

A simple parallelism could be drawn here with surfing.

In truth, surfers don't control the ocean themselves. The skill we possess comes from moving with something much larger and more powerful - Nature, the ocean, water, etc.

Waverider's comic book version applies a similar visual idea to time.

Then there is the Silver Surfer

Now, here's a connection with another well-known superhero from another dimension.

Waverider appeared in 1991. Marvel's Silver Surfer had been around since 1966, when he first appeared in "The Fantastic Four," issue #48.

The Silver Surfer is Norrin Radd, an alien from Zenn-La who becomes the herald of Galactus. His defining visual feature is impossible to miss: he travels through space standing on a silver surfboard.

The board was part of Jack Kirby's original design.

Accounts of the character's creation describe Kirby drawing a figure on a flying surfboard as the herald of Galactus. Stan Lee later developed the character and gave him the name Silver Surfer.

So the two characters occupy remarkably similar visual territory.

One is a cosmic traveler riding through space; the other is a temporal traveler riding through time.

It seems like we've got all grounds covered, surf-speaking.

Surfing the universe

Therefore, the difference is what each character is surfing.

Silver Surfer uses an actual board - or at least something closer to that.

He can travel through outer space on it, making the surfboard a permanent part of his identity and one of the most recognizable images in Marvel Comics.

Waverider has no equivalent piece of equipment in the same sense. His wave-shaped energy form is connected to his powers and his movement through the timestream.

The Silver Surfer is essentially surfing the universe; Waverider is surfing time, like someone riding the "green room."

Again, neither character needs an ocean to justify the name. In both cases, surfing becomes a visual language for extraordinary movement.

Why call him Waverider?

The name works on several levels. At the most basic level, Waverider describes what he appears to do.

He rides a wave. The deeper meaning comes from the nature of his powers.

The wave represents the timestream, allowing the character to "ride" through different moments and possible futures.

It also separates him from the usual comic book time traveler.

A machine, portal, or glowing doorway can transport a character through history, but Waverider gives time travel a physical motion.

He moves through it, and he rides it.

The name is therefore less about "surfing water" than it first appears, but a description of his relationship with time.

Two surfers, two universes

There is no need to treat Waverider as a direct copy of the Silver Surfer.

Their stories, powers, and origins are different, and there is no solid evidence that Waverider was officially created as a Silver Surfer counterpart.

However, in essence, there is a resemblance.

Both characters take the familiar image of a person standing on a board or wave and place it in an impossible environment.

Silver Surfer turns outer space into his surfing ground. Waverider turns the timestream into his with something much bigger to ride.

If you wish to explore more about the Silver Surfer, we definitely encourage you to get Taschen's tribute book "Marvel Comics Library. Silver Surfer. 1968-1970" with all 18 stories from the original series.

Ben Gravy had already seen what a ferry could do. What he had not seen was a ferry wake that looked like a wave pool barrel.

The New Jersey surfer and YouTuber has spent years searching for waves that most surfers would never think to surf.

River waves, tidal bores, boat wakes, and other unusual forms of moving water have become part of his surfing world.

We could very well say he is the master and guru of all weird and unexpected waves.

But the wave he found in Nova Scotia pushed the idea of ferry surfing into a different category. The field of tube-riding boat-generated wakes.

It was not simply another wave created by a passing boat.

At its best, it was a long, fast, and hollow wave that produced barrels Gravy described as reaching six feet.

And getting one was far from easy. The story began with a ferry. Yes, as it usually starts every Ben Gravy story.

A wave hiding behind The CAT

Gravy and his crew traveled from the northeastern United States to Nova Scotia to chase a wave generated by The CAT, the high-speed ferry that connects Bar Harbor, Maine, with Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

The ferry crosses the Gulf of Maine in about three and a half hours.

Most passengers would see an enormous wake from the deck; something to put their eyes on to kill time.

But Gravy rarely takes the ferry. He just thinks about it as something that can generate highly appealing waves.

The talented content creator had already surfed one behind his local ferry in New Jersey.

"I just saw a bomb off the back of my local ferry in New Jersey. And I surfed one wave, and I got addicted," Gravy explains in his YouTube video.

That one ride eventually led him to start looking for bigger and better versions of the same phenomenon.

The Nova Scotia wave had already caught his attention earlier in the summer. Gravy and his crew had actually made an initial attempt but had not quite figured it out.

So they came back.

"We're back for round two," Gravy says at the beginning of the September mission.

The goal was no longer simply to find a ferry wake. They already knew the wave existed. Now they wanted to understand it.

The first look was the giveaway

Once The CAT was underway, Gravy and the crew began watching the wake from the ferry.

The scale of the vessel immediately became apparent.

The crew learned that the ship is powered by four large engines, each producing roughly 12,000 horsepower, with jet drives rather than conventional propellers.

From the water, all of that machinery translates into an enormous amount of moving water.

Gravy quickly realized that they were looking at something much more interesting than a typical boat wake.

"What's pretty amazing about being up here is if you look off the back, you can see future bombs," he said. "These will be waves one day."

Then the shape of the wake began to reveal itself.

The crew watched as sections that initially appeared too shallow or disorganized changed shape farther along the line.

"Look, that's too shallow," Gravy says. "But now watch. Watch as this dips out. Look, it's going to be really good."

A few moments later, they had their first major breakthrough.

"So we basically just found a left and a right out of a channel wave at the same exact time," he says.

The crew compared one section to a miniature Teahupoo.

"It was like four-foot Chopes," Gravy says. "Just kept going."

The important discovery was that the ferry was not simply creating a moving lump of water.

Its wake was interacting with the local underwater contours and producing something that behaved much more like a conventional surfer wave.

The problem was figuring out how to ride it.

A wave faster than they thought

The first attempts quickly showed that seeing the wave and riding the wave were two very different things.

After one session, Gravy summed up what they had learned.

"We made the most progress that we've made on this wave yet," he says.

But the biggest discovery was not its size.

"It is as fast as we thought. It's faster, actually."

That meant the jet-ski driver was just as important as the surfer.

Gravy specifically praised Travis Beckmann, who had joined the mission and was responsible for positioning the ski.

"Backman's a hell of a jet ski driver," Gravy says. "He's making it happen."

The crew had to learn where the surfer needed to be, when to accelerate, how close the ski could get to the breaking wave, and how the constantly moving ferry wake interacted with the bottom.

The timing was particularly difficult because the wave was not a normal swell arriving at a beach.

The source of the energy was moving, and the wave itself continued to change as it traveled.

The crew therefore had only a limited opportunity every time the ferry passed.

As Gravy later describes it, they would wake up, prepare for the next run, surf one wave, and then wait for hours before getting another opportunity.

"It feels like Groundhog Day," he says.

"You wake up every day with a 7 a.m. alarm, and all you have to do is get ready and go surf one wave and then wait eight, 10 hours for the next wave."

But each attempt was teaching them something.

From riding the wave to making the barrel

The breakthrough came when the crew realized that the problem was not necessarily getting onto the wave.

It was getting through it.

By this point, Gravy had already managed longer rides. His goal had changed.

"Yesterday, I got the long one, the one we've been looking for on the glider," he explained. "And now we're going for the critical one. We're going for the barrel."

He described the next stage of their understanding in unusually precise terms.

"Now we're back at the ground floor, and we're like, dude, we can actually one, ride it, two, potentially make it."

But even that came with a catch.

The wave was so long and unusual that making the barrel did not necessarily mean simply disappearing behind the curtain and emerging on the shoulder.

"You're riding, you get pulled back into the barrel, then the barrel lets you come out, and you can make it," Gravy explains.

"You would probably go back into the barrel, but it's essentially unmakeable because the wave doesn't end."

That was the problem they had to solve.

And by the final day of the trip, they believed they were close.

Conditions finally lined up

The crew had learned that the wave was extremely sensitive to conditions.

They needed the right tide. They needed light winds. They needed the ferry to produce the wake at the right speed and position.

They also needed to be in the correct place when the wave reached the section they wanted to surf.

Gravy compared the final day's conditions with an earlier session that had produced an unusually good left.

"We have light winds and the closest conditions that we've had to that wave today," he says.

The confidence level had changed dramatically.

"As of last week, I would have paid $1,000 cash if you told me that I was going to get the wave that I got," Gravy says. "But now it's like we're at a different level."

Then the ferry arrived. And the crew went to work.

The ride

Gravy's successful wave begins with a mistake. He jumps off the ski and nose-dives. That could have ended the attempt.

Instead, Beckmann reacts immediately.

"I jumped off the ski and nose-dived, and he picked me back up and put me on in the perfect spot," Gravy later explains.

The positioning was finally right.

Gravy gets into the wave, accelerates down the line, and disappears into the barrel. Then he comes out.

His reaction says almost everything about what had just happened.

"Dude, Travis just got me the best ferry wave of my life."

Then the realization hits him.

"I just got a barrel and made it out."

The crew erupts.

"What the f*** are we talking about?"

"What the f*** just happened?"

"Not real."

"100% not reality."

The wave keeps running.

"It kept going," someone says.

For a crew that had spent days trying to work out whether the barrel was even makeable, the sight was difficult to comprehend.

Gravy could barely put the experience into words.

"I literally don't know what to say except for the fact that the universe is good to me."

A $10,000 wave

The successful ride also put a price on the discovery.

Gravy says he had spent about $10,000 on the research and development required to figure out the wave.

After finally getting the barrel, he decided it had been money well spent.

"Feels like the $10,000 that I spent on research and development for this wave was worth it," he says.

Then he gives the wave its unofficial price tag.

"That was a $10,000 wave."

He also compared what he had just surfed with one of the world's most famous artificial waves.

"Did it not look like Lemoore?" Gravy asks. "It looked like the Kelly Slater wave pool."

The comparison is telling.

The remarkable part of the Canadian ferry wave was not simply that it was big. It was that the wake, combined with the right underwater contours and conditions, could briefly produce a remarkably organized and hollow wave.

The "only" problem for the crew was that they had to learn how to find it.

The successful ride was also about the people who made the mission possible.

He singles out Beckmann, whom he has known for more than 25 years.

"I'm so happy that he was the guy that came on the trip that put me into that wave," Gravy says.

Ferry-wave surfing is a team sport. The surfer cannot simply paddle into the wave and wait for the right section.

The ferry creates the energy, the underwater contours shape it, the timing determines where it breaks, and the jet-ski driver has to put the surfer in position.

One small mistake can end the attempt, and Gravy knows that better than anyone after the trip.

"One minuscule human mistake is what ruined it for me," he says after one of the earlier attempts.

Gravy's final reflection on the mission was characteristically bigger than the wave itself.

"The things that you can imagine inside your head, you can make them up. They can be ridiculous, unreasonable, completely out of control, and you can turn them into reality."

For a surfer who became obsessed with ferry wakes after seeing one bomb behind his local New Jersey ferry, the six-foot barrel in Nova Scotia was the result of taking that idea to its logical extreme.

The wave was there. The hard part was figuring out how to ride it.

Several studies have shown that surfing can heal and greatly improve mental health. That we already knew. But there's a new update: we might not necessarily need beaches to get similar results.

A study led by Tim Trythall, impact and research manager at The Wave Project, found that surf therapy doesn't necessarily need an ocean beach to produce positive results.

The evaluation followed 360 young people through six-week surf therapy programs. A total of 302 took part at beaches, while 58 surfed at inland wave pools near Bristol and Edinburgh.

Both groups improved on every measure recorded before and after the program across all five outcomes, with remarkably similar improvements.

The ocean produced the bigger wellbeing increase

The biggest difference appeared in the WHO-5 Well-Being Index, a measure that scores emotional wellbeing from 0 to 100.

The average beach score rose from 56.4 to 76.5, an increase of 20.1 points.

The wave pool group started higher, at 62.5, and finished at 73.1, an increase of 10.6 points.

That means the increase among beach participants was 9.5 points larger than the increase among wave pool participants. The difference was statistically significant, with p = .003.

The effect sizes tell the same story. The beach program produced an effect size of 1.08, compared with 0.57 for the wave pool program.

But there is an important detail behind those numbers. The wave pool group started the program with wellbeing scores 6.1 points higher than the beach group.

By the end, the gap had fallen to just 3.4 points, with average scores of 76.5 at the beach and 73.1 in the wave pool.

So while the beach group improved more, both groups ended the six weeks at broadly similar levels.

The study does not explain why the beach group recorded the larger increase. It also cannot show that the ocean itself caused the difference.

Surfing helped build confidence in both settings

When it came to self-belief, the difference between the beach and wave pool was much smaller.

Beach participants increased their self-belief score by 0.59 points, compared with 0.43 points for the wave pool group.

The ability to keep going through difficulties increased by 0.67 points at the beach and 0.59 points in the wave pool.

Pride in achievements increased by 0.54 points among beach participants and 0.48 points among wave pool participants.

All three measures improved significantly in both groups.

But despite the slightly larger numbers for the beach group, none of the differences in improvement were statistically significant.

The p-values were .30 for self-belief, .62 for perseverance, and .71 for pride.

In other words, the data do not show that surfing at the beach produced greater gains in these areas than surfing at an inland wave pool.

Connection to other people was almost identical

The numbers become even closer when looking at social connection.

Participants rated their sense of connection to other people on a seven-point scale.

The beach group went from 3.6 to 4.4, an improvement of 0.80 points; the wave pool group went from 4.1 to 5.0, an improvement of 0.83 points.

That is a difference of just 0.03 points between the two improvements.

The statistical test produced p = .932, meaning there was no significant difference between the settings.

The effect sizes were also almost identical, at 0.49 for the beach group and 0.53 for the wave pool group.

Interestingly, the wave pool participants had higher connection scores both before and after the program. But they did not improve more. Both groups increased by almost exactly the same amount.

The beach had an edge when it came to making friends

There was one other statistically significant difference.

When asked whether they had made new friends during the program, 81.5 percent of beach participants said yes.

Among wave pool participants, the figure was 69.0 percent.

That is a difference of 12.5 percentage points, and it was statistically significant at p = .049.

This was the only significant difference among seven questions about the participants' experience of the program, apart from the separate wellbeing analysis.

The study does not explain why the friendship numbers differed. 

However, one practitioner suggested that beach sessions may give young people more informal time to talk between waves or during slower conditions, whereas wave pool sessions tend to run on a more predictable schedule.

That explanation was not tested by the evaluation, though.

The other numbers were high in both settings.

Almost everyone had fun: 99.3 percent at the beach and 98.3 percent in wave pools.

Almost everyone said they learned something new: 98.0 percent versus 96.6 percent.

The figures for feeling valued were 97.0 percent versus 98.3 percent, while 98.0 percent of beach participants and 94.8 percent of wave pool participants said they were able to be themselves.

Feeling more confident was reported by 94.4 percent of beach participants and 91.4 percent of wave pool participants.

None of those differences were statistically significant.

The surfing environment was not the only difference

There is a reason to be cautious about turning these numbers into a simple ocean-versus-wave-pool argument.

The two groups were not randomly assigned to their locations. The people taking part in the beach programs may have differed from those attending the inland programs before they even got in the water.

The sample sizes were also very different. There were 302 beach participants but only 58 wave pool participants.

That smaller inland sample means there is more uncertainty around its estimates.

The researchers also combined the two inland locations into a single wave pool group, so the results do not show whether the Bristol and Edinburgh programs produced different results.

And there was no control group of young people who did not take part in surf therapy.

That means the study can show that the young people improved during the six-week program, but it cannot prove that surf therapy itself caused those improvements.

It also cannot establish that the larger wellbeing increase at the beach was caused by the natural ocean environment.

What the numbers say about surfing and wave pools

The most interesting part of the study is that the difference between the ocean and the wave pool was smaller than might be expected.

Both groups improved significantly across every measure.

For self-belief, perseverance, pride, and connection to other people, the amount of improvement was statistically similar.

The two clear differences were wellbeing and friendship.

Beach participants gained 20.1 WHO-5 points, compared with 10.6 points in the wave pool. And 81.5 percent of beach participants said they had made new friends, compared with 69.0 percent of those in the wave pool.

Those figures do not prove that natural waves are better therapy than artificial ones.

They do show that substantial positive changes were recorded in both environments, while leaving some interesting questions about what happens when surf therapy moves from the coastline to an inland wave pool.

More data, particularly from larger inland groups and repeated years of programs, will be needed to see whether these differences remain.

Words by Luís MP | Founder of SurferToday.com