The shark expert and filmmaker David Riggs told Perth Now that Esperance "is the latest White shark hotspot (to be) recognised on the planet,” he said. "Before we had dropped anchor we had six 15-foot Great Whites pushing our boat around. It’s full-on."

Here: The Great White Shark Vigilantes!

"Someone is going to die and that’s the unfortunate reality of it."

Ain’t no fun when your town becomes, of all a sudden, the “Isle of Jaws.” Esperance is a pretty, and let’s face it until recently pretty dull, town seven hundred clicks south-east of the Western Australian capital, Perth.

In April, the seventeen-year-old surfer Laeticia Brouwer was attacked and killed by a Great White shark in front of her family while surfing at an Esperance beach.

“It’s severely hectic down here and someone is going to die and that’s the unfortunate reality of it,” Esperance Ocean Safety and Support Group leader Mitch Capelli told Perth Now

According to reports, Esperance fishermen are baiting and killing Great Whites because of a lack of government action. Fishermen hooked a feisty ten-footer that had been filmed biting and bumping boats on three different days.

“A lot of people have been calling me up and saying, ‘Let’s just go out and catch it because no one else is going to do it’. I’ve really been strongly advising against it because if we’re going to be taken seriously then we need to be … going about things the right way,” says Capelli.

The shark expert and filmmaker David Riggs told Perth Now that Esperance “is the latest White shark hotspot (to be) recognised on the planet. Before we had dropped anchor we had six 15-foot Great Whites pushing our boat around. It’s full-on.”

The Great White is a protected species, of course. And the law’s gonna come down on anyone who rolls back to the dock with a dead White on the deck.

So what sorta heat y’gonna get if you ice a White?

First offence. Ten gees.


Professional surfer Chas Smith (pictured) doing his patented down the line backside move in Yemen 2002.
Professional surfer Chas Smith (pictured) doing his patented down the line backside move in Yemen 2002.

Congrats: Chas Smith becomes pro surfer!

A major career move!

I would like you to take a few minutes this morning to congratulate me on becoming a professional surfer. Thanks! It has been an incredible run from surf journalist to professional surfer, one that I never quite thought I’d make.

And how did I become a professional surfer? Oh. I just decided and let me walk you through the process.

The kind people who run the Building the Revolution Instagram account messaged me the other day with a question:

How easy is it to become a pro surfer? Skaters, wakeboarders and snowboarders have to have a company think they are worthy enough for a pro model. Pro team sports athletes need to be picked for a team. Golfers need to be on tour. Surfers? Who decides if a surfer gets pro status.

And this really got me thinking. I know how difficult it is for skaters and snowboarders to go pro. As stated, it is your board company who “takes you pro” and you must jump though many hoops and even very talented kids never get “pro” status.

As things happen, I was chewing on this when I bumped into a very famous surf agent in the grocery store. After exchanging pleasantries I asked, “Is there any formal requirement to become a pro surfer?” He answered, “As long as a kid makes 100 bucks surfing, he’s a pro as far as I’m concerned…”

I have never made a 100 bucks surfing but I am riding a tester board right now from the gorgeous Album Surfboards in San Clemente and I bet if I ask they will give me a t-shirt and a sticker.

Which makes me pro.

A pro surfer. I probably won’t do the tour or be a video pro or a travel pro. I’ll probably be a writing pro, writing about my experiences pro surfing n stuff.

So long surf journalism. You were always only second best.


John-John-Florence
Can you imagine the spiny stories John John's gonna be telling in twenty years? | Photo: @surfroast

Quiz: What was your greatest surf moment?

Come to daddy and tell a little surf story.

One thing about surfing: to know it is not necessarily to love it.

With the possible exception of golf, there ain’t a game as able to deftly erase a man’s esteem, confidence, identity and sense of athleticism like surf.

How many times a week do you surf? Once, twice, every day?

All those sessions over all those years. The bad, the very bad, the ok, the sorta ok, the kinda good. Onshore, onshore, a little wind swell here and there.

Around it goes until…

Those moments.

I estimate that I’ve surfed 3640 times, each session around an hour long.

And isn’t it just surf to think, how many of those precious moments have I gathered, how many waves do I remember?

I’ve got a handful: surfing a wavepool at midnight under a full moon in the Canary Islands, dropping in on a pal and landing one of the five straight airs of my life, a tube in front of Little Groyne Kirra that was clocked by a former top five pro surfer who told me, on the beach, he thought I was dead.

And, another tow moment, a ten-foot day at a Sydney reef near Narrabeen.

Bigger than anything I wanna be near or, given my big-wave experience, anything I should be near.

I let go, the wave throws and all I want to do is straighten out.

It’s too big, too round, requires too much commitment.

But I don’t want to be cleaved in two by the lip either.

With legs that are quivering and a feeling of such aloneness that I might actually cry, I turn into the tube. It throws further than anything I’ve ever seen. I’m screaming and my arms are thrown instinctively above my head. I fly into the channel, pumping my fist in the air like an alt-right hooligan. My two buddies on the ski are nowhere, gone hunting peaks around the headland.

All that drama, and such a potential story, without a witness? Can you imagine the desolation?

And after all those sessions? Travel? Money spent, time squandered? That’s all I got? One shit story?

And you?

All your sessions? All your travels?

What do you remember?


HR-Bad-Brains
HR connects one satisfying word with his time back in the waves: “Happiness.” | Photo: Photo courtesy HR

Long Read: Surf Saves Bad Brains Frontman!

Ocean gives punk icon HR an anti-depressive lift!

HR strolled into the grand lobby of the Lord Baltimore hotel where he was awaiting the premiere of Finding Joseph I, the story of his rise, struggle, and return to Jamaican waters.

Selfishly, I wanted him to jump up onto the glass coffee table, unleash a desperate roar, then spring into a perfect backflip.

But HR, leader of the pioneering punk rock group Bad Brains is not this person. His gait is measured and at times uncertain. His words are few and gently drift out of a small sixty-one-year-old frame. He is fragile.

Yet somewhere in this man exists a history of all of us who heard his voice screaming inside our heads as we furiously paddled: CHARGE! It’s no coincidence that Bad Brains’ anthems brought life to countless surf videos; HR knows the ocean and its power.

HR still retains a bit of the unique style that attracted so many kids to him, his music, and his Positive Mental Attitude, or PMA, over the last four decades.  Reclining in a silver Adidas track suit with matching shoes, Rasta-colored knit hat and fat gold watch — clasped outside of the sleeve, of course—  he opens up.

But HR doesn’t share much about the watch, the music or the PMA. He talks about his first memories of swimming on the shores of Jamaica and playing in the waves of Hawaii.

He wants to talk about the ocean.

“When I was a boy living in Waikiki, I once dove into the water after a sailboat anchored way in the distance. I thought I could make it there underwater but quickly realized that I was drowning. I was too far from that boat and too far from shore,” he says.  “Then I see my father dive in.”

HR closes his eyes and smiles. “He saved my life.”

Growing up on the beaches of Hawaii gave HR (Human Rights), born Paul Hudson, the opportunity to develop an intimate relationship with the water. He and brother Earl (also Bad Brains’ drummer) wanted to imitate the surfers they saw and idolized including the Duke, whom HR declares as his favorite.

The two boys shaped primitive skim boards with their father’s tools in the garage and spend their days throwing themselves into the shore break.

“They worked really good,” he explains as his eyes light up. “But, you know, it depended on who was riding them.”

HR laughs, a modest nod to his skills.

As HR entered adolescence, his father, an Air Force employee, began a string of short-term reassignments which removed the family from idyllic Hawaii to such inland locations as Texas, Alabama, and the New York City. While HR was no longer close to the ocean, his passion for the water remained. Settling in, HR joined his school’s diving team.

“I loved to dive.  That’s where I learned to flip and I never stopped,” HR says referring to the lightning-powered acrobatics that would soon help define his onstage charisma. He excelled so rapidly that his school coach offered to train him for an Olympic bid.

“The coach asked my mom what she thought about me moving away to work with the Junior Olympic team,” HR recalls.  “But she wasn’t havin’ it. I wanted it, but she said, ‘no way.’”

His mother knew that another reassignment was approaching. This time, HR would land in Washington, DC, home of the President and birthplace of the young Bad Brains.

And then came the music.

Album after furious album.

Touring and notoriety.

Madonna and her Maverick record label came calling.

Chris Blackwell, owner of Island Records, petitioned HR to play Bob Marley in an official bio-pic. There’s even an intriguing photo of a Cheshire-grinned HR aside a woman —curiously resembling Brooke Shields — drawing in a big lungful of something.

All the supposed glory of a rock star was within reach.

But HR wasn’t interested in money or fame.

While living in North San Diego County in the late 1990’s, HR was once again drawn to the water and rediscovered his habit of watching local surfers, the same routine as on the shores of Waikiki. Friends also claimed that around this time he also developed other, less-healthy habits.

As the rest of us moved on to middle-class prizes, he remained true to his words: “The bourgeoisie had better watch out for me,” HR sang.

What money he had, he spent or gave away. He rarely held a permanent address, bouncing from home to the street and on to the next, ping-ponging between the east coast and California.

While living in North San Diego County in the late 1990’s, HR was once again drawn to the water and rediscovered his habit of watching local surfers, the same routine as on the shores of Waikiki. Friends also claimed that around this time he also developed other, less-healthy habits.

There were stories and rumors. HR smokes crack. HR just plays games. HR is crazy. During his most troubled times, he could be seen shuffling around the streets costumed in a platinum-blond wig, gold slippers, flowing white bathrobe over a electric-green Adidas track suit, an acoustic guitar dragging behind him. A genuine tinfoil on-the-head departure from reality. An overwrought English accent layered his ravings about Princess Diana or Barack Obama possibly tapping his phone.

Like in the waters of Waikiki, HR once again needed saving.

In 2010, independent film-maker James Lathos learned that HR was sleeping in a boarded-up warehouse in downtown Baltimore.

“He was just surviving,” says Lathos. “It was not a healthy place.”

Lathos realized that he had an opportunity to do more than simply document the downfall of one of rock’s most mythical figures, he had the chance to bring him to the surface.

Lathos, a surfer, thought quickly.

“I had to get him out of the urban ghetto. So what better place than the ocean?”

After securing the needed funds, the two traveled to Jamaica with a small crew to capture HR’s return to the waters where he first played.

“It was therapy,” says Lathos.  “It’s a heavy burden to be him… to see him diving off the cliffs and swimming in the ocean was everything. You could see his spirit open. He felt free again.”

HR connects one satisfying word with his time back in the waves: “Happiness.”

And when I ask him if he attempted a backflip, HR replies, “No, I just dove straight down… but this time I came back up.”

It was his start to recovery.

Some things are better described than defined, and mental illness might be such a thing. The Jamaican trip may have been the spark for HR to seek medical help for his deteriorating mental state. Doctors found he displayed symptoms characteristic of schizophrenia. They also diagnosed him with SUNCT, a rare brain condition which causes debilitating and constant “icepick” headaches. Fortunately, doctors have been able to address both conditions.

Yet, this does not underscore the power of his ocean homecoming.

As Lathos saw it, “He was off the hellhole streets and happy, man. It was redemption.”

Lathos also sees a bigger picture. “I’m glad I could help my friend and if this movie, which shows HR’s struggles with mental illness, can help even three people, it’s worth it.”  But the director-surfer digresses. “Of course, any chance to get in the water in Jamaica is worth it, too!”

Currently, HR is working with his Bad Brains bandmates on more material, ready to deliver the message of PMA to a new generation of kids charging into waves.  In Finding Joseph I, HR confesses, “I was given a responsibility to be a leader, but I also had to be a human being” — a balance which might finally be reclaimed.


Visit: The rebel island of Taiwan!

A fabulous history with fabulous waves!

You are, of course, a student of history and are very aware of Formosa, or what we call Taiwan/the Republic of China. The island, floating just east of mainland China and north of the Philippines, was made famous in modern times when the Chinese communists, led by Mao Zedong, fought the Chinese nationalists, led by Chang Kai-shek, in a bloody civil war. The communists won a series of decisive victories pushing the nationalists to Taiwan where Chang Kai-shek declared Taipei to be his de-facto wartime capital. And there has been a cold stare ever since with Beijing laying claim to the island and the island insisting on its autonomy.

What you may not know is that there is surf.

And let me introduce you to Hawaiian pro surfer Macy Mullen. A fine name by any account.

Born and raised in Hawaii, professional surfer Macy Mullen experienced Taiwanese culture through his mother who is of full Taiwanese ethnicity. Macy heard stories, history and perspective from his mother, but always wanted to see his (and his mother’s) homeland with his own eyes. With a Summer window of opportunity and the Western Pacific Typhoon season swinging into full effect, Macy and fellow Hawaii pro Alex Pendleton booked a last minute strike mission to Tainan, the capital of Taiwan, with hopes of scoring surf along the eastern countryside. Their trip provided more than just quality surf, they also dove deep into Taiwan culture and made lifelong friendships within the new, budding Taiwan surf culture.

Shall we watch? We would be foolish not to.