triton gills
The Triton underwater gill system has been making the rounds on the internets for while now. A magical piece of equipment, able to turn man into fish by filtering oxygen molecules from the water. It was hailed as a scientific advancement that'd free us to explore the depths at our leisure.

Magic: Underwater Gill System!

Have you always wanted to breathe underwater without bulky tanks?

The Triton underwater gill system has been making the rounds on the internets for while now. A magical piece of equipment, able to turn man into fish by filtering oxygen molecules from the water. It was hailed as a scientific advancement that’d free us to explore the depths at our leisure.

All bullshit, of course. 

Couldn’t possibly work, merely the brainchild of a trio of scammers who hit on a notion into which the poorly informed would happily dump their hard earned money. Pretty much crowdfunding in a nutshell.

The Indiegogo campaign featured amusingly edited footage of a swimmer blowing bubbles underwater, begging the question, why not just pay a freediver to stick the thing in their mouth and play around in the ocean? I could’ve done it. Would’ve for a cut of their swindled dough. Not often you get a chance to monetize the ability hold your breath and swim downwards. Would’ve looked super cool, drag the thing down to a hundred feet and clown around a bit.

But they half-assed it, and lost their money. Yesterday Indiegogo suspended their campaign, refunding the $900K that a mind boggling number of morons had pledged in the face of overwhelming proof that it was a scam.

Oh well, no big deal, live and learn. Obviously there’s no such thing as a magic gill system. Some of us knew that, now everyone does.

Or so you’d think. After their initial project was shut down for violating Indiegogo’s TOS (read: being a scam), they changed their rhetoric, popped up a new campaign that claims to use “liquid oxygen technology,” and took off running.

You’d think, no one could possibly be stupid enough to dump more cash into their pockets.

But you’d be wrong!

They’ve got a new video, featuring some guy sitting in the shallow end, breathing through what is obviously a cunningly disguised pony bottle.

They’ve already conned nearly $200K worth of idiot bucks out of the uninformed and unintelligent! Amazing! Almost admirable, that refusal to back down from a con in the face of your own falsehoods.

Thankfully, we can take solace in the fact that breathing compressed air underwater is horribly dangerous without training. Even with, which is why I’d rather risk shallow water blackout than suck air at any depth.

If they actually follow through and ship the product we’ll get to see backyard pool owners the world over experience the joys of pulmonary baurotrama, drowning, and death. Which possibly isn’t a nice thing to joke about, but I’d enjoy a world free of a few thousand morons.

The only thing they could do to improve it now would be to slap on some stripes and call it a “shark deterrent.”

Perfect opportunity for synergy, grab that overlap between the cowardly and outright stupid.


Wow: Great moments in surf history!

Let us return to Craig Anderson's epic Kandui session and compare!

Craig Anderson slid into the now famous No Kandui wave many months ago, while also sliding into surf history, and we have all digested it fully. The world has responded by purchasing Hayden’s Hypto-Krytpo and as they should. A very sexy board. But let us think about the wave, far removed from the initial shock of first seeing, and wonder how it stacks up to two other singular rides in surfing history.

Let’s take Tom Curren in ’94 on the Fireball Fish.

And Andy Irons at Teahupo’o.

That Wave – Andy Irons from Billabong on Vimeo.

And now Craig Anderson.

CRAIG ANDERSEN l KANDUI LEFT from FTR Films on Vimeo.

How does it look compared to other bits of surf iconography? Is it aging well? I think yes but what about you?


Sunny Garcia
Do you like the irony of this photograph, a well-wisher (son Stone Garcia) busily texting while Sunny Garcia recovers after being hit by what he claims was a texting driver… 

“Texting Driver” Hits Sunny Garcia!

The 2000 world champ in head-on collision. Blames "texting driver"… 

Who doesn’t text when they drive? Ain’t a soul alive. I’m all over the thing, sending long emails, what I think are dazzling texts, all while controlling a car doing sixty mph.

I scan the road for obstacles then dive into my phone to write. I also investigate Instagram and various other apps.

It’s stupid, yes, but addictive, also yes.

Earlier today, the 2000 world champ Sunny Garcia, who is 46 years old, announced on Instagram (the new Associated Press) that he had just had a head-on car crash with, he claims, a texting, and speeding, driver.

Pretty sore right now thanks to a guy speeding and texting while driving hitting me head on but I’m living so can’t complain:) thanks @natedorman and @stonegarcia for taking care of everything after I got taken away in the ambulance #couldbeworst #noitsnotajoke #luckytobealive #fucktextingwhiledriving”

If true, how would you feel if you were slinging texts, with the pedal firmly to the floor, and you looked up to see Sunny Garcia coming through your windshield?

Would you be thrilled to finally meet your childhood hero?

Read more about Sunny here.

And examine two excellent driving-while-texting shorts here…


Kelly Slater AFR
Kelly Slater in AFR magazine. | Photo: Todd Glaser/AFR

Long Read: Kelly Slater x Marion Hume

Kelly Slater, interviewed by dazzling fashion maven and novelist Marion Hume!

Yesterday, the Australian Financial Review’s magazine ran a Kelly Slater/Outerknown cover story. The writer of the profile piece is the fashion maven and novelist Marion Hume, whose subjects have included Yves Saint Laurent, Tom Ford, Karl Lagerfeld  and Giorgio Armani.

Do you like it when a non-surfer swings into our game?

I find it a fascinating collision of curiosity minus the surf idolatry that happens when someone, yeah, like me, gets a face to face. There’s no desperation to impress, no awkward surf talk.

The piece, How Kelly Slater is Shaking Up Fashion, took place at the London College of Fashion and… is sharp.

Let’s examine.

“He was doing radical manoeuvres. I thought, ‘this guy is going to wreak a fair bit of havoc’ . . . that, and he had the lethal competitive attitude of a great white shark.”

How well these words sum up the guy who has me in an eye-lock, a disrupter who wants to shake up the murkiest corners of the clothing business, the ones in which dirt-cheap sweatshirts are piled high. A guy who’s not afraid to question why garments should be so cheap as to ignore the dignity of their makers, or why they must be individually wrapped in plastic. That wrapping tends to end up in the ocean, where plastic will outnumber fish by 2050 unless we change our ways. Here’s a revolutionary who won’t just suck it up and shut up about an international supply chain that’s broken at pretty much every stage.

But honestly, are you bored already? Because let’s be frank, the least welcome fashion accessory is a halo. For all the chatter about ethical fashion, there’s a reason it remains niche: most consumers just don’t care. Which suits the multi-trillion-dollar global apparel industry just fine. The fate of those who try to do things differently? The business usually sucks them into its swell, then pummels their principles out of them as they strive to make a buck. Or it rolls right over them, spitting them out like flotsam. Exceptions are rare.

I love the part where Kelly tells Ms Hume about his wavepool, a few months before its launch.

During the interview, I’m oblivious when he gives me a scoop on his Kelly Slater Wave Company, which after 10 years of development has finally cracked the first competition-strength, man-made wave. “I don’t even know what that is,” I say and move things back to clothes. Months later his wave breakthrough is announced to frenzied excitement, with surfers around the globe vying to discover its secret location.

Read more here! 


Matt Wilkinson WSL

Rip Curl Donates Profits to Amnesty!

"Rip Curl takes its duty as a good corporate citizen seriously"…

April 1, Costa Mesa, California: In a surprise press release issued April 1, Rip Curl has announced it will donate all proceeds from its winter 2015 line to Amnesty International after a small batch was produced by what the Sydney Morning Herald described as North Korean “slave labour”… 

From the release:

Since its creation, Rip Curl has strived to produce the finest in athletic sportswear, while ensuring profits enable the brand to continue expansion. Unfortunately, in their quest to lower the bottom line, certain sub-contractors engaged in conduct which we cannot sanction.

Therefore, Rip Curl has recently hired an independent team to evaluate all current production facilities, as well as the working conditions experienced by our sub-contracted manufacturers.

Rip Curl takes its duty as a good corporate citizen seriously, and we apologize for failing in our responsibility to conduct some of our operations in a manner consistent with the bare minimum of human decency. 

Finally, in an effort to demonstrate that there was no intentional wrongdoing, Rip Curl will be donating the net profits from its 2015 Winter apparel line, some of which was produced in North Korea, to Amnesty International. We hope you will bear with us as we endeavor to repair the damage caused by a very small number of unscrupulous sub-contracters.

BeachGrit will deliver more news as the situation develops…