Over the course of six years photographer Tim Nunn and surfer Ian Battrick patrolled the coasts of Norway, Canada, and Scotland catching waves and shooting photos. They created this new book, Numb. While 6mm wetsuits are a bit of a bear, and there were sometimes actual bears waiting on shore, at least they never had to fight their way through crowded lineups. I just wonder why they didn’t also pack a video camera during those six years.

Usually when these things happen, it’s because someone’s had too much beer and is tipsily returning it to the sea, but in Brett Archibald’s case it was seasickness that did him in. The 50-year-old South African was on a surf trip in the Mentawai Islands when he became violently ill from rough waters. Some time [ more... ]

Some wildlife encounters you simply don’t expect to survive. Last year, on the day before Halloween, Scott Stephens was gleaming at his good luck. Winds at Humboldt Bay in Northern California were offshore and grooming the waves, which were peaking all along the beach with some extra oomph from the high tide. Stephens nabbed four [ more... ]

The fourth season of the Big Wave World Tour has come to a close, and Greg Long has been crowned world champion. Long didn’t smoke the field at each contest, but he was always at or near the top and that consistency saw him sitting nearly 1,000 points ahead of the other competitors. After a [ more... ]

It was Black Tuesday at Quiksilver — the Orange County, California mega-surf brand closed three of its brands, laid off 30 employees, and slashed the rosters of its many pro teams, according to a report by Transworld Business. The TWB report was posted early Tuesday, then removed at Quik’s request because not all employees losing [ more... ]

At the very southern edge of Southern California’s Orange County is a well-known stretch of beach called Trestles. The name comes from two train trestles that parallel the ocean. And Trestles isn’t just a random stretch of SoCal surf: It represents seven of the best known surf breaks in the world. It’s also been a [ more... ]

FOR CUBANS, SURFING IS REVOLUTIONARY — BUT NOT PART OF THE REVOLUTION Cuban surfers make officials nervous — with all that off-coast paddling, officials think they’re either spies or trying to escape. And for years, having a modern surfboard in Cuba was as rare as having a passport. Most surfers had to use crudely shaped [ more... ]

The San Onofre nuclear generating plant sits just south of the birthplace of California surfing, where groms still learn and longboards still rule. On sunny mornings, SUP riders, segregated to the south of paddle surfers, literally play in the shadows of the cooling towers. The plant, however, has been idled since a leak of radioactive [ more... ]

If you’ve ever driven down Highway 1 from SFO toward Monterey, you’ve driven by Half Moon Bay. And past Martin’s Beach, which is just south of Half Moon and doesn’t belong to anyone named Martin, or to Sun Microsystems founder Vinod Khosla, even though he posted signs on his property closing the road to Martin’s [ more... ]

If the wave Garrett McNamara rode in Portugal this week is 100 feet, we’ll eat something nastier than our hats, and all this suggestive reporting by the media and bloggers that it MIGHT be 100 feet is further evidence of supremacy of cheap tricks, hyperbole, and the lack of critical thinking in our world today. [ more... ]