Surfing

• 1. Introduction

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  Surfing traces its origins across at least three to five thousand years of human history, making it one of the oldest known sports on earth. In ancient Peru, fishermen rode reed watercraft called mochica back to shore after casting their lines, catching waves the way a modern surfer would. Across the Pacific, Polynesian peoples brought the art of riding surf to the Hawaiian Islands, and it was there that standing upright on a board was first practiced. West African communities in places like Ghana and Cameroon developed their own surfing traditions entirely independently, with accounts documented as early as the 1640s.

  Today, a single wave ride holds the world record at 86 feet, achieved by Sebastian Steudtner at Nazare, Portugal, and surfing became an Olympic sport at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. But what makes surfing so durable across so many cultures and so many centuries? What is it about the face of a moving wave that has drawn human beings into the water since before written history? And how does a sport born on reed mats and wooden belly boards become a multibillion-dollar global industry? Those questions run through everything that follows.

• 2. Ancient Origins

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  Jesuit missionary Jose de Acosta described watching fishermen in Callao, Peru in his 1590 publication Historia natural y moral de las Indias. He wrote that the men sat astride their reed vessels cutting through rough seas, looking like the Tritons and Neptunes painted upon the water. The watercraft they used, the caballito de totora or little horse of totora, had archaeological evidence of use dating to around 200 CE within the Moche culture.

  Far to the west, the Polynesian history of surfing stretches back to around 400 CE, when people began migrating from Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands to the Hawaiian Islands. They brought paipo boards for belly riding with them. Standing and surfing upright on a board was an invention of Hawaii specifically.

  In West Africa, the evidence is striking for its independence. Michael Hemmersam described parents in the Gold Coast tying their children to boards and throwing them into the water in the 1640s. In 1679, an account from Elmina in Ghana described children learning to swim on bits of boards fastened under their stomachs. James Alexander observed boys in Accra in 1834 riding into shore on light boards, rolling like a cloud on top of the surf. Thomas Hutchinson documented fishermen in southern Cameroon riding small dugouts just six feet long in 1861. None of these traditions borrowed from each other. They arose separately, a testament to what breaking waves do to human imagination.

  References to surf riding are also confirmed for pre-contact Samoa, where it was called fa'ase'e or se'egalu, with roots that predate Hawaiian surfing by over a thousand years according to the ethnographic record of Augustin Kramer in The Samoa Islands.

• 3. Surfing Reaches the West

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  In July 1885, three teenage Hawaiian princes on a school break from St. Matthew's Hall in San Mateo traveled to Santa Cruz, California. David Kawananakoa, Edward Keliiahonui, and Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole shaped redwood boards and rode the mouth of the San Lorenzo River, marking what surf historians Kim Stoner and Geoff Dunn record as the first surfing in California.

  George Freeth, born in 1883 with English and Native Hawaiian descent, is credited with doing more than anyone else to revive surfing at Waikiki in the early twentieth century after the sport had declined during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In 1907, land developer Abbot Kinney, founder of Venice of America in what is now Venice, California, brought Freeth to the mainland. The Hawaii Promotion Committee had arranged a contract for Freeth to give surfing exhibitions at Venice of America in July of that year. Later in 1907, land baron Henry E. Huntington hired Freeth as a lifeguard and exhibition surfer at the Hotel Redondo in Redondo Beach.

  Duke Kahanamoku extended the sport's reach even further. After winning Olympic gold medals in swimming in 1912 and 1920, he spread surfing to both the United States and Australia. Mary Ann Hawkins, inspired by Kahanamoku's surfing in the late 1920s, became a pioneering figure in women's surfing. On the 12th of September, 1936, she won California's first women's paddleboard race at the Santa Monica Breakwater. In 1938, she won both the women's half-mile paddleboard race and the Venice Breakwater event on the same day. By January 1939 she was appointed head of the women's auxiliary group of the Santa Monica Paddle Club, and her peer "Whitey" Harrison called her the best tandem rider in the sport. When a professional tour started in 1975, Margo Oberg became the first female professional surfer.

• 4. How Waves Work

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  Swell begins far from the beach, generated when wind blows consistently over a large open stretch of water called the wind's fetch. The strength of the wind, the length of the fetch, and how long that wind blows all determine how large the resulting swell becomes. Deep-water waves have no interaction with the sea bottom; the orbits of water molecules beneath them are circular. Only when water depth drops below half a wave's wavelength does the bottom begin to exert its influence.

  As waves travel into shallower water, the bottom creates friction that slows the base of the wave while the crest continues forward. The top outpaces the bottom, steepens, and eventually breaks. The resulting surf zone is a collision of multiple wave types. A wave suitable for surfing results from maximum speeds of around 5 meters per second, though local wind conditions alter what arrives.

  Offshore winds, blowing from land toward the sea, blow into the face of a wave and produce ideal surfing conditions, including the barrel or tube wave prized by experienced surfers. Onshore winds do the opposite, creating choppier surfaces and random breaking patterns. Strong direct offshore winds can produce large plunging barrel waves, while a weak offshore wind can flatten a swell entirely.

  The peel angle is among the most important measurements for a surfable wave. It is the angle between the wave front and the horizontal projection of the break point over time. A peel angle of zero degrees means the wave closes out all at once, which would require infinite speed to surf. A peel angle of less than 25 degrees is generally too fast for all but the world's best surfers. Beginner waves typically peel at 60 to 70 degrees. Banzai Pipeline and Shark Island, at peel angles above 27 degrees, are classified as territory for top world surfers.

• 5. Boards, Bodies, and Variants

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  Surfboards were originally solid wood, often up to 12 feet long and weighing as much as 150 pounds. Lighter balsa wood boards, first made in the late 1940s and early 1950s, changed the sport by making boards portable and more maneuverable. Most modern boards are built from fiberglass foam with wooden stringers, fiberglass cloth, and polyester resin. Epoxy resin with expanded polystyrene foam is lighter and stronger but produces less sensory feedback through the board, which is why many advanced surfers still prefer traditional construction.

  The modern shortboard took shape in the late 1960s and evolved into the thruster, a three-finned board typically around 6 to 7 feet long, invented by Australian shaper Simon Anderson. Modern longboards run from 9 to 10 feet and require surfers to perform traditional walking maneuvers as well as the tight turns more associated with shortboarding. The funboard occupies the middle ground. Writer Steven Kotler offered his assessment bluntly: "It is the happy medium of mediocrity. Funboard riders either have nothing left to prove or lack the skills to prove anything."

  Body surfing, in which the surfer uses no board at all, is considered by some practitioners to be the purest form of the sport. At the other extreme, hydrofoil surfing generates so little drag that riders can travel on unbroken waves in the open ocean. Tow-in surfing, most often associated with big waves, uses a motorized watercraft to pull the surfer into position, allowing them to match speeds that a self-propelled surfer cannot reach. Wakesurfing, in which a rider surfs the wake of a V-drive boat, is among the newest entries to the family of wave-riding sports.

  Sixty-six surfers once shared a single 42-foot-long surfboard in Huntington Beach, California, setting a record for the most people on a surfboard at one time.

• 6. The Art of the Ride

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  The tube ride is considered the ultimate achievement in surfing. When conditions are right, a wave breaks in an orderly line from the middle to the shoulder, allowing an experienced surfer to position inside the wave as it pitches overhead. Known as getting tubed, barrelled, shacked, or pitted, the longer a surfer holds that position inside the wave, the more accomplished the ride. Pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu, Teahupoo in Tahiti, and G-Land in Java are among the world's most celebrated tube-riding waves.

  At Pipeline, the tube is classified as round to almond in shape, with a peel angle placing it squarely in top-world-surfer territory. Teahupoo in Tahiti is classified as a slow, square wave of extreme intensity, meaning it breaks with enormous force despite a slower peel. The contrast captures how different wave types reward completely different skills.

  For longboarders, the signature moves are hanging ten and hanging five. Hanging ten means placing both feet at the nose of the board with all ten toes over the edge. Hanging five uses one foot, with five toes off the front. Among aerial maneuvers, a full 360-degree rotation is called a full rotor. A 540-degree rotation, adding another 180 degrees beyond a full rotation, is achievable by only a small number of surfers in the world. The backflip, typically done with a double grab on both rails simultaneously, is reserved for elite-level surfers. The rodeo flip, a backflip with a 180-degree rotation done backside, is considered somewhat easier than a straight backflip.

  The cutback, the most foundational advanced maneuver, involves generating speed down the line and then reversing direction back toward the breaking part of the wave. It is the move that keeps a surfer connected to the wave's energy rather than racing ahead of it.

• 7. Dangers and Health

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  A January 2018 study by the University of Exeter, known as the Beach Bum Survey, found that surfers and bodyboarders were three times as likely as non-surfers to carry antibiotic-resistant E. coli, and four times as likely to carry other bacteria capable of quickly developing antibiotic resistance. The researchers attributed the difference to the fact that surfers swallow roughly ten times as much seawater as swimmers do.

  Up to 66% of surfing injuries result from collision with a surfboard, specifically its nose or fins. Fins can cause deep lacerations. The leash that keeps a board attached to a surfer's ankle can itself become a hazard; in some cases, including the drowning of professional surfer Mark Foo, the leash snagged on a reef and held the surfer underwater.

  Surfer's ear is a condition in which bone near the ear canal grows after repeated exposure to cold water, narrowing the canal and making it harder for water to drain. The result can be pain, infection, and ringing in the ear. A rare spinal cord condition called surfer's myelopathy causes paralysis of the lower extremities. It results from hyperextension of the back, which can kink one of the main blood vessels of the spine and deprive the spinal cord of oxygen. In some cases the paralysis is permanent. DPT Sergio Florian has recommended proper warm-up, limited session length, and sitting on the board rather than lying prone while waiting for waves as preventive measures.

  Rip currents can reach speeds of 0.5 to 2.5 meters per second, faster than any human can swim. The largest rip currents measure 12 to 15 meters wide. Paddling parallel to shore rather than directly against the current is the standard method of escape. Some surfers use rip currents deliberately as a fast route out past the break zone.

• 8. Culture and Competition

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  During the 1960s, the Gidget film series, starting in 1959, helped turn surfing into a cultural aspiration for American youth. Beach Party in 1963, Ride the Wild Surf in 1964, and Beach Blanket Bingo in 1965 extended the California dream through cinema. Surf culture also fueled the early recordings of the Beach Boys, weaving the sport into the fabric of American popular music.

  The International Surfing Association, founded in 1964, is the oldest organization formed to oversee surfing and is recognized by the International Olympic Committee as the sport's leading authority. National and international competitions began that same year. The World Surf League, established in 1976, organizes championship tours at top surf locations around the globe. A small number of elite athletes make their careers through corporate sponsorships and filming at distant locations; they are known as freesurfers.

  Surfing's entry into the Olympics came in 2016, when the IOC added it for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The first gold medalists were Italo Ferreira of Brazil in the men's competition and Carissa Moore of Hawaii in the women's competition.

  Dale Webster surfed consecutively for 14,641 days, making it the organizing principle of his life. The sport that got its start with Peruvian fishermen on reed boats has since produced, as of 2023, a world record wave ride of 26.2 meters, or 86 feet, by Sebastian Steudtner at Nazare, Portugal.