Bright: The WSL’s future!

By Chas Smith

9 years ago

Professional surfing is almost huge!

If you come to BeachGrit regularly, and of course you do, you’ll notice a wonderfully playful tone and a flippant, though sexually charged, undercurrent when it comes to the World Surf League. We prod because we love! But lately the WSL has done us so so proud. Mick and the shark? Julian and the brave? Strider and the tits? It has been win after win after win. Sure, CEO Paul Speaker sent out a ~~definitely~~ possibly misguided email asking for people to Instagram, tweet, Facebook #ImWithMick but really it’s all gold!

Today, Outside Magazine, a ~~hideous~~ wonderful men’s interest magazine with an emphasis on Teva sandal tan lines based in S~~anta Fe, New Mexico~~ Santa Fe, New Mexico wrote a piece that sings. Matt Skenazy, the author, highlighted, among other things, how the WSL is actually working. And it is. In cutting the ties sport has to traditional broadcast models, Speaker and co. are charting a brave new course. Millions of people are watching and millions more are in the wings. What Youth‘s Travis Ferre is quoted in the article as saying WSL webcast is “embarrassing” and “feels like it’s directed more toward the Ohio State football team than those who have dedicated our lives to the raddest lifestyle in the world” but he was as wrong as we were and I’m certain would sing its praises now.

Friday, Teahupo’o starts (also my birthday!) and what an amazing time it will be. There will be swell. There will be the top surfers in the world. There will be a wave used in Pizza Hut commercial, fire stunt and motorcycle stunt.

There will be millions upon millions of views.

Congrats all around!

And read Outside‘s story here!

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Mute: Nate Tyler on Breaking Necks and Owning Dance!

By Derek Rielly

9 years ago

Because what else matters in life?

Nate Tyler’s movie twenty-minute film-ella Mute has appeared (you can watch it below).

And, watching Mute, which I quite like but have to admit didn’t alter my perception of performance surfing in the way Cluster did, it reminded me of the time Nate instructed me on the whys and wherefores of killing a man with your bare hands and, more practically, how to own a dance floor.

Murder on the dance floor and, literally, murder.

BeachGrit: Tell me about your beautiful dance. During any overseas holiday, you’re the owner of every dance floor.

NATE: My dad would call it Ecstatic Dance. My dad’s a DJ at Dance Church where a group of people gets together and just dances and moves however they want. They can roll off each other, roll on the ground, nobody’s judged and nobody’s embarrassed.

BeachGrit: Do you apply the same principles of Ecastatic Dance?

NATE: My mind is at ease and I’m dancing how I want.

BeachGrit: It must be a beautiful thing to see…

It’s really not.

BeachGrit: Did your SEAL bro really capture Sadaam Hussein?

NATE: No! He definitely didn’t!.

BeachGrit: It would be something to boast about…

NATE: Yeah, that would be a good one even if he did I’d never know. He’d never tell me.

BeachGrit: That would be classified.

NATE: That would be pretty classified.

BeachGrit: Has he shown you how to kill people?

NATE: I don’t put myself into any fighting situations but he keeps all that shit to himself.

BeachGrit: It would be helpful. To know how to slice throats or break necks.

NATE: You’d have to be really strong and really technical with all that.

BeachGrit: You must be strong as bear! Often, you’re mistaken for Craig Anderson, the Australian surfer. This doesn’t thrill you, at least according to the word on the street.

NATE: Yeah. I was in Mexico and they were amping that Craig was there but we never saw Craig. It was me the whole time.

BeachGrit: Did you tell them, “I had long hair first”…

NATE: I tried to tell them that. The ironic thing was, six months prior, Craig and I were at that exact same wave and the funniest thing is, people were sitting there and they’re, like, that’s Craig Anderson! And I would see that person later in the water and they’d come up and introduce themselves and then, like, act like I was Craig. And, I’d tell em, hey, I’m not Craig, and then they’d try and tell me, oh, well, Craig was here six months ago. And I was, like, “Fuck, so was I!”

BeachGrit: You’re one of the only surfers over six who doesn’t have an Insty account? Why no?

NATE: The ironic thing is, this week I have to do one. For sponsors, it’s such an outlet and I think it’s bumming ’em out that I don’t have one. I don’t have anything against it, but fuck, I never had a Facebook and I definitely never had a Twitter. I always think I keep to myself, maybe I don’t, but I definitely don’t like voicing it through the masses.

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How to kill a Great White (with a piece of rope!)

By Derek Rielly

9 years ago

Only hypothetically, of course!

Killing a Great White shark isn’t as hard as you think. These peerless, top-of-the-chain tanks are just as vulnerable as the surfers, the swimmers and the scuba divers they’re suddenly bumping into and biting with surprising gusto.

How?

Just make a rope lasso. Let the fish swim through the noose and when the rope passes those iconic, collectable, priceless jaws and just before it reaches the dorsal fin, pull tight.

Four, maybe five minutes, and the White is dead. Hanged.

“Get ’em on the hook and they go neanderthal,” says a shark fisherman who wisely prefers anonymity and asks that I don’t reveal his home port. “Use a powerhead and if you hit the wrong spot the spot the shark’s going to take off with half its face blown off. Of course, the lasso method ain’t perfect, either. Use the wrong people and they can get dragged over the side.”

The shark fisherman doesn’t just have a theory on the dramatic increase in great whites, in Western Australia at least. He’s positive its due to the AFMA (the Australian Fisheries Management Authority) shutting down vast areas of fishing areas to gill nets because of the by-catch of Australian fur seals and great whites.

What fisheries didn’t know was that skippers were under-calling the number of whites coming up in the nets; the skippers afraid they’d be shut down if fisheries knew just how many whites were destroyed as by-catch. In the end, they were closed, anyway. The irony is, if fisheries knew just how many whites were coming up, perhaps it wouldn’t have been regarded as a threatened and endangered species.

“Think about this,” he says. “Ten years ago, there were nine or 10 boats operating and killing 200-to-300 Pointers a year. We were allowed to have an incidental catch of pointers. They’d get tangled in the nets and come up dead. Now, say, if we work with a conservative kill figure of 200, and 50 of these Whites are mature, and of those 50, 25 are female, they are going to have one baby every two years. So, instead of the population growing like it was, or sustaining at a certain level, it’s blowing out. It’s growing faster and faster. The number of Pointers is increasing dramatically.”

As we speak, he texts me a clip of a five-metre white attacking his boat, taken the day before on his iPhone. “This thing was breaking its teeth off on the boat,” he says.

Just like Amity Island in the movie Jaws, Western Australians and those in the Byron shire have a choice. Leave their beaches to the whites or deal with the problem in a manner that is neither cull nor coddle. The evidence is clear, says the fisherman.

“What they need to do,” he says, “is to anchor any whites they catch near the beach. The other great whites won’t go near it. When we’re fishing, we don’t throw sharks heads over the side because it scares the fish on the bottom. Think about it. You’re having a party and someone throws a body into it. The party’s over.”

(This story first appeared in Fairfax newspapers online)

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This is what a fifteen foot tiger looks like, in case y'wondering.

Shark Fever: Meanwhile near Snapper Rocks!

By Derek Rielly

9 years ago

How about this thick little tiger caught near the world's favourite point…

There’s a photo doing the rounds of Facebook right now of a tiger shark that was caught off Tweed Heads, just north of Byron Bay and slightly south of Snapper Rocks’ Supa Bank.

According to the Tweed Daily News:

“A HUGE Tiger shark caught off Tweed Heads last month swallowed a six foot Hammerhead shark just before it was pulled aboard, said Tweed Coast fisherman Matthew.

“I was fighting the Hammerhead and he came up and swallowed it,” he said.

shark attack — A fisherman was reeling in a six-foot hammerhead off the Tweed Coast (near Snapper Rocks) last month when this dazzling creature ate it… whole! Including hook!

“You can’t turn around and go no, don’t touch, to something like that.”

The four metre shark was caught about three weeks ago, 14 miles off Tweed Heads, licensed fisherman Matthew said.

Compared to others Tiger sharks he’d seen, Matthew said this specimen was small.

“I’m always on the water; either on it, in it, or under it,” he said.

“I dive with sharks; I love diving with sharks.

“I’ve dived with sharks bigger than that, it’s only a little one.

“I’ve seen Tiger Sharks 24 feet-long off Tweed.”

Having been on the ocean since he was four, Matthew said there were definitely more sharks around now.

“I think the numbers are increasing rapidly, very rapidly,” he said.

The explosion in social media users, Matthew said has made shark sightings more common.

“There’s nothing different to years ago except now when things like this get on social media they just take off,” he said.

“They’ve always been there.”

Matthew said Tiger sharks were every bit as fearsome as Great Whites.

“Metre for metre a Tiger Shark’s bite is bigger than a white,” he said.

“They just have different teeth and a different biting technique.”

Culling sharks was not the answer to preventing attacks, Matthew said, as history showed the animals returned in increased numbers.

“To use the word cull in such a heavily regulated industry is a bit harsh because the word cull is the big divider in public opinion,” he said.

“I think the fisheries need to review their quota system because we’re restricted very heavily on what we are allowed to take each week

“The current system is not going to put the slightest dint in the population of sharks.

“You’ve got to fish for your kids future, not your future.”

The whole Tiger Shark was sent to the fish markets, except the jaws, which Matthew kept as a souvenir.

Want more? Click here.

And, meanwhile, back down the coast at Broken Head…

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Yeah, you can sleep on the beach, in certain areas. But it ain't some fun outdoorsy solo trip. You've got neighbors, lots of them. There's the angry meth addict with two vicious pit bulls tied up outside his shanty, there's the off his meds schizo who fell through the cracks creeping in the bushes, there's the strung out single mom with five kids living out of their ramshackle mini van. And forget about living on Oahu's North Shore, you're headed for Waianae. If you think the corpo surf world is cool with you pitching a tent and roasting weenies in front of their beach rental you've got another thing coming.

How to: fail at Hawaii!

By Rory Parker

9 years ago

The seven dumb mistakes people make when they cut off a slice of paradise…

Moving to Hawaii, and making things work in the long term, comes down to your first six months. Man, are those babies a doozy! Broke as shit, not knowing anyone, struggling to find work, a place to live, banging your head against the pervasive nepotism present in a place that puts a premium on interpersonal relationships.

It’s hard as hell and most people give up. My mother gave up after three days.

Which makes it even more difficult for the people who stick it out. Employers don’t want someone who may bounce in two months, and you’ll be kept at an arms length by your new friends. No reason to get close when you’ll probably bail back home at the first sign of hardship.

I’ve seen so many people come and go over the last seven years, and they all make the same mistakes.

Have a problem with being broke

It doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how good your skill set is, wages are lower than the mainland and the cost of living is way higher. Your quality of life is going to take a major hit, if you measure it in financial assets.

Learn to find joy in the free things. Hike, surf, dive, head down to Ehukai and bask in the glorious under-aged ass cavorting in the shorebreak.

Offer unsolicited opinions

No one wants to hear how you feel about the Hawaiian sovereignty movement or about how tourism supports the state (for the record, menial jobs that don’t pay a living wage don’t count for shit), or about how hard it is being a white man in Hawaii or that the anti telescope/anti GMO/anti whatever activists are idiots.

Unless you’re enlisted and live on base. Those are really the only things those people talk about.

Smoke meth

It’s un-fucking-real how many people move to Hawaii and start smoking meth. It doesn’t even make sense. A tropical wonderland that lives life at a crawl calls for downers, not uppers.

Think that living outdoors is an option

Yeah, you can sleep on the beach, in certain areas. But it ain’t some fun outdoorsy solo trip. You’ve got neighbors, lots of them. There’s the angry meth addict with two vicious pit bulls tied up outside his shanty. There’s the off-his-meds schizo who fell through the cracks creeping in the bushes. There’s the strung-out single mom with five kids living out of their ramshackle mini van. And forget about living on Oahu’s North Shore, you’re headed for Waianae. If you think the corpo surf world is cool with you pitching a tent and roasting weenies in front of their beach rental you’ve got another think coming.

Pick up a pidgin accent

If you live here long enough you can’t help but adopt some words. No matter how hard I try, I find myself saying “shoots” and “manini” and “no need.”

But there’s a certain type of haole that tries to fit in by employing an ersatz accent. “Ho, brah, we go holo holo” sounds fucking retarded when you have a nasal Cali twang.

Steal fruit

Seriously, never pick fruit without asking permission. You’ll get your ass kicked and the cops won’t do shit, because you had it coming.

Be a hippy

I’ve noticed this is more of a thing on Kauai. Little dorks running up credit card debt while pretending to chase enlightenment. No one, and I mean no one, likes hippies. They’re filthy dirty and they stink. Which is totally unacceptable in a place with the ocean, plenty of public showers, and a million streams to rinse your foul body in.

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Eat beach grit spam!