The World Surf League reacts to punishing its
surfers.
Agent on WSL rules: “This is deeply
offensive!”
By Chas Smith
"It really is fascist. I can't believe it."
When Nick Carroll writes I read and under the
latest piece
revealing the World Surf League’s fascist tendencies in restricting
what the surfers participating in tomorrow’s Founders’ Cup can post
on social media he wrote:
Where are all the agents in this whole shitshow? Didn’t they
used to run ragged over the surf cos on a regular basis? What are
they thinking in connection with the WSL and its
direction?
And I thought, “Yeah! What do sport’s agents think?” So I called
the best one in all of action sport, read the World Surf League’s
missive to athletes and pressed record.
To take something that really should be public domain,
surfing in the ocean, and putting it behind a wall is already
offensive in its lack of democratic visibility. That aside, the
above-the-line restriction is counter-intuitive. Surfers have their
own identities. It’s not like a real league, like baseball or
basketball, where everyone wears the same uniform. The surfers are
individuals and have always been individuals. If they’re going to
restrict the individual athletes’ participation on tour then they
need to pay them a salary.
It would be like competing in X-Games and not being able to
promote the partners that got you there. This letter sounds like
the Olympics, rule 40, which prohibits athlete sponsors from
promoting them, or athletes promoting the brands during the Olympic
period. It’s problematic because it restricts the athletes from
benefiting the partners who facilitate their
participation.
This happening during the time of massive market contraction
is a disservice to the industry that for years has encouraged
participation and enthusiasm. It really is fascist. I can’t believe
it.
And there you go.
The fucking bastards. I haven’t been this incensed since… since…
Tom Ford sent me a pair of sunglasses that have very loose arms and
they slide down my nose and make my head look extra thin.
More to come.
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Future Surf Ranch locations seen on map.
Fascism: The WSL cracks down at Surf
Ranch!
By Chas Smith
A leaked email confirms worst suspicions!
With tomorrow’s airing of Founders’ Cup live on
CBS from Lemoore’s Surf Ranch it is official. The World Surf League
has liberated waves from the ocean. Before Kelly Slater’s great
revolution waves had been hideously oppressed by nature. They had
been starved and flogged. They had been brutalized but also
brutalized us with their fickle behavior. Waves were altogether
impossible to trust, maybe due their starving and flogging but
still. Forecasts would predict their arrival but they wouldn’t
come. Or they would come somewhere they weren’t supposed to. Or
they would come just for a few moments, for a tease before leaving
Kieren Perrow scratching his wet hair, stone-faced.
But now they are liberated from fate and will march happily when
the powers tell them to march.
Such total power. Such complete control.
And have you wondered how surfing would look locked behind a
high wooden fence and how the World Surf League would exercise its
total power and complete control? Would it be benevolent or
fascist? Hands off or iron-fisted?
I have wondered and watched. Who gets invited and who doesn’t.
What they post on social media and what gets deleted. It has long
felt, to me, that there is a creeping consolidation of narrative.
That the total power and complete control of the waves is being
foisted upon the surfers themselves and today a leaked missive from
the League confirms.
Dear athletes,
We are extremely excited for the Founders’ Cup of Surfing
and are stoked that our athletes are spending time at Surf Ranch.
We would like to remind you to please respect the space as a
training center and venue, which includes avoiding any brand
endorsements that imply an association with Surf Ranch, including
on social media.
When on the property, please do not endorse products
(through product placement). This includes, for example, products
placed in front of the wave, within the locker room, etc. You are
of course allowed to post footage of your performances and rides at
Surf Ranch and tag your sponsors while doing so.
A useful rule of thumb is that if you look at a potential
post and see a product in association with Surf Ranch imagery, or
if you see a post at Surf Ranch and assume it is a paid
advertisement or contractual commitment with a brand, it is likely
to have crossed the line. On the other hand, if it is sharing an
experience or a nod to the event, without product placement or
product endorsement, it is not an issue.
We respect and encourage you to have endorsement deals and
have prominent social media presences, but ask that avoid implying
Surf Ranch is part of such deals.
If you have any questions, please reach out to any one of
us. I will send you some detailed examples next week of posts that
are ok and posts that are not.
Thank you for all your support.
While most totalitarian regimes begin seeming
innocuous, the World Surf League has decided to buck that trend and
go full fascist straight out of the gate. The implications of the
above are honestly wild and, if extrapolated, render sponsorship
deals with professional competitive surfers moot. The “useful rule
of thumb” could be applied to any post whatsoever. Any post of any
thing could be seen as a “paid advertisement or contractual
commitment with a brand…” because they are, but it is the surfer
reaping the ever dwindling benefits and not the World Surf
League.
What’s more, it shows the League’s willingness to assert total,
complete authority over what happens behind the fence. That damned,
god-forsaken place. I can only hope the pro surfers themselves
have enough backbone to tell the League to fuck right off and post
all sorts of brand products in front of the wave, within the locker
room, etc. You can take our waves but you can never take our
freedom!
Fuck those bastards.
And I am only getting started. I haven’t felt righteous
indignation like this since… since… Swiss airlines stranded my poor
family in Zurich for an extra four days, without real apology, at
the end of our Alpine vacation.
Fuck all those bastards.
More to come.
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Surf fans flee for their lives at the Margaret River
Pro after two attacks in one day. | Photo: @Jaws
Invest: Shark Shield Wants $5-ish
million!
By Derek Rielly
It works, mostly, depending on the "motivational
state of sharks."
Have you ever dreamed of owning a small slice of a
cutting-edge technology company? One that is not only
a game-changer but actually saves human lives? And, best of all, is
a growth industry?
One week ago, the Australian company Ocean Guardian
Holdings, formerly Shark Shield, threw open its doors
with an IPO (initial public offering, means they’re selling shares
in the company) in the hopes of moving 25 million shares at 20
Australian cents apiece in its go-away-shark biz.
Shark Shield, if you were wondering, is one of the few
technologies that has been independently proven to work, at least
some of the time.
The technology behind the Shark Shield Freedom+ Surf has
been shown to deter great whites from potential prey. Many divers
in South Australia swear by them. The device emits electromagnetic
pulses up to 2m. These pulses are detected in the sensory organ in
the shark’s head called the ampullae of Lorenzini, making the shark
uncomfortable. But the findings into the device’s effectiveness are
inconclusive, especially in situations when the shark is in attack
mode. Also, two people have died while wearing the device.
Abalone diver Peter Clarkson was
wearing a Shark Shield designed for divers when he was killed near
Coffin Bay, South Australia, in February 2011. He was known to
switch his device on at all times while diving but nobody knows for
certain whether he did so on this occasion.
Paul Buckland was wearing a
SharkPOD, an earlier version of the Shark Shield, when he was
attacked and killed off Ceduna in April 2002.
At the subsequent coronial
inquiry, it was concluded that he had not turned the device on when
he dived into the water. He reached the bottom and was collecting
scallops when a shark started buzzing him. He turned the device on
and swam to the surface. Once on the surface, the device’s
effectiveness was reduced. He was then attacked.
Senior Sergeant RB McDonald, of
South Australia’s police water operations unit, told the inquiry
that such devices have “little effect” once a shark has reached a
“level of excitement where it will attack”.
Asked after this week’s launch
whether he agreed with this, Shark Shield managing director Lindsay
Lyon said: “Look at the independent scientific research that shows
that Shark Shield is capable of deterring a shark charging at …
full speed.”
The research Lyon refers to was
conducted by Charlie Huveneers off South Australia in 2012. A seal
decoy was towed behind a boat at 10km/h. Great whites approached
the decoy as if to attack and were seemingly deterred by the Shark
Shield, but their speed was not recorded. The commonly agreed top
speed of great whites is 40km/h but one researcher has estimated
one travelling at 56km/h.
Huveneers also noted that the
Shark Shield “did not deter (great whites) in all situations”, and
that the effectiveness of the Shark Shield depended on the
“motivational state of sharks”.
The inner-motivations of Great Whites aside, let’s examine the
company’s books.
Biz is booming, profits not so much.
Is it viable biz? Is it worth throwing your lunch money or your
life savings at?
Ain’t much profit dripping down, those big numbers in brackets
down the bottom are losses, that twenty-gees in the middle is a
real slim make on almost two million dollars of sales.
The company wants to raise capital, it says, to expand into the
leisure boating market (who wants to see y’kid swallowed as she
gets towed behind on her inflatable banana?) as well as investigate
new long-range shark deterrent technology.
(Actually, $750,000 will be the cost of the float, $1.2 mill
will be spent on marketing and only $1.5 mill be spent on
research.)
Interestingly, the technology behind Shark Shield has been
off-patent since 2016 meaning you could, theoretically, save your
cash and start your own go-away-shark biz with Shark Shield
technology.
Do you remember ten years ago when Jordan Michael Smith
turned down a five million dollar contract with Nike to ride for
O'Neill because it was a "traditional surfing company"? And even
after a personal intervention by Tiger Woods on Nike's
behalf?
Watch: Jordy Smith in “A Catnip
Dream!”
By Derek Rielly
An examination of the South African's fire and
brimstone…
Last night, O’Neill, the primary sponsor of the world
number twenty, Jordy Smith, loosed a four-minute edit of
their prize surfer.
Now, tell me, what’s wrong with that last sentence? The
combination of “world number twenty” and “Jordy Smith”, wouldn’t
y’say? Jordy Smith, who is thirty years old, has only sputtered in
these opening two-and-a-quarter events and now languishes in the
ratings’ stern.
This edit (as they say) demonstrates the misleadingness of
competition ratings for, here, Jordy reveals his otherworldly
ability to lace endless combos around the Bells and Margaret River
events. It is a short mostly free of quirky lifestyle shots and
serves, instead, as an examination of the fire-and-brimstone the
South African is capable of.
Yes, much is at stake for Jordy career wise in the back
two-thirds of the tour.
But I like to think that his bad start to the year is less a
squandering of talent and more a failure to
unwrap.
Watch.
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Thanks SharkBanz!
Repelled: SharkBanz is back!
By Chas Smith
Magnetic device apparently recovers from 2017
attack!
Do you remember two Januaries ago when brave
Florida teen Zack Davis paddled out at his home break wearing a a
brand-new SharkBanz shark repellent bracelet and was subsequently
bit by a shark? The most mortifying thing ever, if you happen to
own and/or invest in SharkBanz. The owner and/or investor quickly
took to the news and put the blame squarely on young Mr. Davis’
sore shoulders.
“What happened here is essentially the rarest of shark
encounters where Zack jumped off his board and pretty much landed
on the shark,” (founder Nathan) Garrison said, of Zack’s rare
attack wearing the device, “if anything it probably helped clear
the shark out of the area quicker.”
Mmmm. Totally probably.
Well, an investigation into the incident was promised though I
don’t ever recall seeing it. In fact, I thought SharkBanz
disappeared entirely, going the way of PowerBalance but I was
wrong. A press release informed me today that SharkBanz is not only
not gone but co-sponsoring the Eastern Surfing Association’s girls
and boys under 14.
Sharkbanz (Mano LLC), the affordable, wearable shark
deterrent is excited to announce their sponsorship of the largest
amateur surfing association in the world, the Eastern Surfing
Association (ESA). Sharkbanz joins notable surf brands Rip Curl,
OluKai and Stick Bumps in supporting the grassroots surf community
and competitions.
“We want to enable all people who love the ocean, but
especially young surfers because they spend so much time in the
water.” Commented Tim Nelson, Brand Manager, Sharkbanz. “Our
products were created by surfers and divers so they could focus on
their efforts, not their fears.”
Mmmm. Yeah.
The ESA regionals appear to take place near Melbourne Beach,
Florida.
I still can’t believe a boy was attacked while wearing a
SharkBanz and the company survived.
We live in remarkable times.
Now please enjoy some video from this year’s Eastern Surfing
Association regionals.
