Impregnable: West Oz gov to build 260km anti-shark maginot line!

"A matter of life and death," says environment minister.

You know, of course, the story of France’s Maginot Line. The French built a series of concrete fortifications after World War One to keep out the dang Germans.

Ten years later, the revitalised Hun marched around it and drove its long dick into Paris’ guts.

Gone in two weeks.

Recently, the state government of Western Australia announced it would build its own 260 kilometre fortification, deploying 180 electronic drum lines along popular Western Australian beaches (from Quinns Rock just north of Perth to Mandurah just south and from Bunbury to Prevelly, i.e. Margs etc). The drum lines will cover beaches where 11 out of 17 fatal shark attacks happened in the past 25 years.

How do the “non-lethal drum lines” work?

You got an anchor, a rope, two buoys and a satellite-linked comms unit attached to a boated hook. When a shark bites, pressure on the line triggers the comms unit which alerts Department of Primary Industries scientists “or contractors” who then respond and work out how to get the beast off the hook. Shark is taken a click offshore and released.

Maybe it dies, maybe it don’t.

Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg said the drum lines were a matter of life and death. 

‘Given the high incidence of shark attacks in Western Australia and the recent release of a CSIRO report into great white shark numbers off the west coast of Australia, now is an opportune time for the Western Australian Government to take further steps to protect is citizens from shark attacks,’ he said.


Mark Zuckerberg wonders if the fin is facing the right direction because an executive at the World Surf League told him that the other way is cooler.
Mark Zuckerberg wonders if the fin is facing the right direction because an executive at the World Surf League told him that the other way is cooler.

WSL + Facebook: “👎🏼👎🏼👎🏼!”

Surf fans react!

I was forwarded a very fine story today titled Update: Streaming from J-Bay and while it would have looked much better if it was titled Update: Streaming from J-Bay! I still enjoyed it very much. Which parts? Funny you should ask. I enjoyed:

While many fans worldwide are experiencing our high-quality coverage of the Corona Open J-Bay on Facebook, there are some that aren’t at the moment.

We would like to apologize again for any inconvenience. The technical challenges are being worked on.

We remain committed and excited about sharing the stoke of surfing with Facebook, and to grow the audience for the benefit of the sport going forward.

But mostly I enjoyed what all those worldwide fans experiencing the WSL’s high-quality coverage of the Corona Open J-Bay on Facebook. They wrote:

Thanks, now that the men’s contest is over and, for the first time in years, I didn’t get to watch anything. 👎🏼👎🏼👎🏼

THANKS A LOT, BECAUSE I’M ALMOST POSITIVE THAT THE MAJORITY OF THE WORLD WATCHING WSL WOULD MUCH RATHER WATCH ON THE WSL APP THEN HAVING TO LOG INTO FACEBOOK JUST TO WATCH OUR BELOVED SURFING CONTESTS. ALL NIGHT LONG FACEBOOK WAS BUFFERING AND KICKING ME OUT AND IT WAS REALLY IRRITATING TO SAY THE LEAST. IF THIS PROBLEM CANT GET FIXED HOW ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO WATCH IT.

IF I HAVE TO ID RATHER PAY FOR A SMALL SUBSCRIPTION TO WSL THEN TO HAVE TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH FACEBOOK.

Facebook it is the worst ever, with a lot of cracks, please back to the last transmition or use the youtube for it, they are much better!!

anybody with a spine will not do facecrook, only the spineless will eat this crap. been watching wsl since it first hit the net and now to hear that they bent over for facecook

Facebook and the wallet of WSL’s CEO will be the only ones who will benefit from this new partnership! The number of new “surf fans” the WSL gains through Facebook will be minimal compared to the number of fans it will lose from its core audience by alienating them. On the other hand, any surfer who decides to signup for Facebook will end up being a net gain for Facesuck… Good luck WSL!

At last a bit of sanity prevails, the damage that going to Facebook has done to our sport is disgusting. Sophie and the rest of the hierarchy at WSL give yourselves an F for Failure for your ridiculous decision about Facebook. We the spectators of a beautiful sport will give you a small tick of approval for going back to your normal broadcast, but we won’t accept the rubbish you are attempting to force upon us. Spectators maintain the rage, weight of numbers have toppled governments, stopped wars and we can win this battle.

WSL you lost me as a viewer. Such a shame to see this direction your going.

Etc.

Etc.

Etc.


Staggering: “Thousands” tune in to J-Bay Women!

Click to reveal the popularity, staggering or otherwise, of women's pro surfing v the men…

Transparency is a fine thing, in biz, relationships and so forth. Until it isn’t.

And just as YouTube views demonstrated a less than y0u’d expect viewership of WSL event clips, Facebook Live has done something no other app, news organisation or company has been able to do: directly compare viewership numbers between the men’s and women’s events at J-Bay.

This would normally be little more than a curio, a side-note, if it weren’t for the fury over a recent junior event where the winner of the girl’s received a winner’s cheque that was exactly half her male counterpart.

(In little-boy-standing-on-the-corner-with-newspaper-bag voice, “Reeeeeeead all about it!”)

So, in similar waves, on the same week, with the same infrastructure, how did the women rate against the men? I figured it’d be roughly half. Five k or so. I don’t miss a heat with Carissa, Gilmore, Ho or Peterson. The rest I don’t watch. By force of numbers I presumed the men would be twice as popular.

From a glitchy start (don’t worry, I called around to see if it was just my connection), numbers hovered around 500, gradually got to a thousand, climbed…climbed…and peaked, as far as I could see, at around 2200 heads watching the English feed.

The best I saw on the Spanish feed was 302. The Portuguese around 350.

I emailed a pal in the UK who replied: “Ok, you ready for this. In a marquee Rd 2 match up between Carissa and Courtney, the numbers are hovering between 240-270! Staggering.”

It’s here the WSL will interject, of course, and remind us that these numbers are geographically specific. Two thousand in Australia, 302 Spanish viewers in Australia, 350 Portuguese and Brazilians watching in Australia and so on.

And, yet, in the Australian feed.

“Hello from sunny Ireland!” wrote Paddy Keane.

And the names of fans liking the feed were distinctly monocultural. Was Australia’s famously surf-crazy Arabic community all tuned in to the women? Hello Mustapha! Hello Fatima!

 

At some point during the feed, the WSL switched their app back onto live streaming.

Did that drain the viewer numbers?

In Australia, was the nation tuned into the broadcast on Fox Sports?

A few minutes ago, and unprompted, a noted professional surfer texted me and asked: “Is the WSL or dead or is FB that’s dead? Or both? So fascinating how podcasts are so much bigger than everything.”

Still, the numbers aren’t definitive. Tonight, howevs, and thanks to an IT pro, we’re going to get numbers from every continent.

Stay tuned, as they say in the classics.


Apply: Keep your favorite break pristine!

No ugly hotels or nasty tourist camps!

Are you proud of your local break? Like, really really proud? When someone asks, “Where do you surf?” do you tilt your head back, puff out your chest and say, “D Street, bro.” Or do you hate surf your local break? Like, grimace and complain and slap the water and be all annoyed?

Well, if you are the former did you know that you can kick big bizness in the balls and set it up as a World Surfing Reserve? It’s true!

A fine group called the Save the Waves Coalition has a process where you can apply for your break to be recognized. It will proudly appear alongside current surf reserves Malibu, Ericeira (Portugal), Manly Beach (Nick Carrol), Santa Cruz, Huanchaco (Peru), Bahia Todos Santos (Mexico), Punta de Lobos (Chile), Gold Coast, Noosa and Guarda do Embau (Brazil).

How difficult is? Well savethewaves.org has a tab on its website that walks you right through. Before beginning maybe take a few moments to discern if your local meets the criteria.

1) Quality and Consistency of the wave(s)

QUALITY OF WAVE(S)
SURFEABLE DAYS / YEAR
SITE OF PRO CONTEST
WAVE VARIETY

2) Environmental characteristics

RECOGNIZED BIODIVERSITY HOTSPOT
THREATENED SPECIES PRESENT
CONNECTED TO WATER RESOURCES
PAST/PRESENT WAVE THREAT LIKELY TO BE MITIGATED
PROTECTED DESIGNATIONS
UNDEVELOPED AREA
KEY ISSUE IDENTIFIED
CLEAR AVENUE FOR LEGAL PROTECTION LOCALLY
PROVIDES KEY ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

3) Culture and Surf history

SITE OF NAT’L CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE
IMPORTANCE IN SURF HISTORY
SITE OF REGIONAL SIGNIFICANCE

4) Capacity and local support

LETTERS OF SUPPORT FROM:
SURF COMMUNITY
GOV’T SUPPORT
NGOS
BUSINESS
ACADEMIA
SUSTAINABLE FINANCING
CLEARLY IDENTIFIED MANAGER
SURF IS KEY PART OF LOCAL ECONOMY
CLEARLY IDENTIFIED RESERVE AMBASSADOR

D Street? Are you ready to shine?

Apply here!


Jamie O’Brien: “I almost died at one-foot Waikiki!’

"Death is always just a stone's throw away," says Jamie.

Who knows when the reaper will strike? He lurks, as you must be aware by now, around every corner.

A moment’s distraction crossing the road meets a driver answering an email. A punch you don’t see coming outside a bar. A shooter in a cinema. A religious nut pops his belt on a train.

The Hawaiian surfer Jamie O’Brien, daddy of the insanely popular WhoisJob series with Red Bull, almost bought the farm, as they say, on June 9, his thirty-fifth birthday.

Fooling around in Waikiki, as part of his new YouTube vlog, Jamie was examining an interesting rock on a breakwall and “stating the obvious,” says Jamie, “I turned my back on the ocean. Honestly, I had put my hand up in front of my face at the last second and I face-planted into my hand. It almost knocked me out just hitting my hand. I almost died at one-foot Waikiki. I almost died at one-foot Waikiki. Frick. I got so lucky.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BkyGjKIDQZI/?hl=en&taken-by=whoisjob

Jamie says the incident knocked him around mentally and continues to haunt him.

“I was thinking about it a lot. You do all this crazy shit your whole career, crazy waves, sitting yourself on fire, and you almost die at one-foot Waikiki. Death is a stone’s throw away, always, but to realise that. I was overwhelmed. It was one of the heaviest moments of my life. I still trip out when I watch the clip. That night, I was laying in bed, thinking, that I almost died at Waikiki. Literally.”

On the upside, engagement on his Instagram post was excellent.

“I knew I had a really good clip on my hands,” says Jamie. “People were psyched. It had a tonne of engagement.”

But, still, “It’s hard not to take something like that seriously. You always wonder in life, when am I going to die? And then it almost happens. Frick.”

(Editor’s note: Jamie created his new vlog as a way of getting a piece of the YouTube pie and to show fans more of his day-to-day life, rather than the big Red Bull strike missions for his show. “We film with Red Bull then we don’t have anything to do for five months. This shows a little more of me and how we have fun.”)