"Performances in Hawaii still count!

But do you remember the last time brave Australians carried out an assault in Hawaii, on Oahu’s North Shore? Of course you do. Of course you remember it like you were there yourself, island rot filling your nostrils, tension lingering on less-than-inviting trade winds because you have seen the now classic documentary Bustin’ Down the Door.

The year was 1975 and Rabbit Bartholomew, Ian Cairns, Peter Townend had come to Hawaii to test their mettle, winning contests, causing much ruckus. It was a watershed moment in professional surfing, one that echoes through eternity and let’s watch a short clip and listen to Edward Norton’s unmistakable drawl.

Very inspiring and is history repeating itself some 45 years later?

Maybe, for a new quadrant of Australian surfers has busted through the floor at the very last minute, officially qualifying for the Big Dance and let us go to Peter Townend’s Facebook for context.

For the first time in a long time we’ve had an “Aussie Assault” on WSL/WQS final rankings with four(4)Aussies qualifying for the 2020 WSL Championship Tour lead by Jack Robinson’s win at the Vans World Cup at Sunset and solid North Shore performances from Ethan Ewing, Conner O’Leary and Morgan Cibilic proving Ian Cairns’s theory that the performances in Hawaii still count as a few that had been WQS “Top Ten” for most of the year didn’t make the cut with poor performances at Haleiwa and Sunset!

Very exciting.

Which one will shine brightest next year? The smart money says Jack Robinson but I’ve got a feeling about Morgan Cibilic. I’m smelling a rookie of the year push.

No?

Also, has Edward Norton stopped acting? I can’t recall a recent movie starring him.

More as the story develops.

Like Huntington Beach only.... frothier!

Do you like to surf after a storm or do you play it cautiously and wait to paddle for the prescribed sixty-odd hours? As a child, growing up on the Oregon coast, I loathed the perpetual drizzle, the non-stop wet and grey, but giant rain squalls often calmed the ocean’s angry surface enough for fun surfs. In southern California, though, I learned that rains bring toxic run-off. Very yuck. Very gross with hairy bubbles etc. gliding on the water and so try to avoid post-rain surfs for at least a few hours.

At least we don’t live in India, I suppose, for there a “toxic-filled froth” washes up on the beach after the monsoon and let’s learn about this new environmental horror. Let’s really dig our teeth in to Al-Jazeera, which means The Peninsula, I believe.

A menacing white foam covered one of India’s most famous beaches in Chennai for the fourth straight day on Monday creating a new pollution hazard for the country.

Children have been playing and taking selfies in the clouds of white suds on Marina Beach, even though they give off an acrid smell and fishermen have been told not to go into the sea nearby.

Doctors have warned that skin problems could be caused by the foam, which forms every monsoon season but has been particularly bad this year.

Word has not got through to the hundreds of families who throng India’s longest urban beach, letting children happily skip in the toxin-filled froth.

The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board said it is analysing samples from the foam which has spread several kilometres along the beach.

“It is definitely not good for people to go into the foam but they just do not understand the risks,” said Pravakar Mishra, a scientist at the National Centre for Coastal Research in Chennai who has seen the clouds of foam grow in recent years.

Much like surfers, I suppose, not waiting the prescribed sixty-odd hours, post-storm, for a paddle.

Also, can Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch incorporate this phenom into its upcoming Freshwater Classic ’20? I think watching our professionals battle each other, and a toxin-filled froth, would be good viewing. I think numbers would certainly go up.

"Prodding the genitals of live great white sharks is only for the bravest of marine researchers..."

Of all the porns that exist, I feel Great White shark porn is under-appreciated. Imagine the stakes, the risk, the loss of life and limb involved in ejaculating semen from a man-eating Great White shark. Well, as harrowing as the process may be, a few brave scientists are willing to go the extra mile, as it were, for science.

Don’t believe?

Let us turn to the most well respected scientific journal this side of the Mississippi, the august Sacramento Bee.

Prodding the genitals of live great white sharks is only for the bravest of marine researchers, of which SeaWorld’s Gisele Montano may be the boldest.

Her job is to collect semen samples from the great white sharks caught by the nonprofit OCEARCH, in hopes of learning about where they mate, give birth and nurse along the East Coast.

Asked how she does this safely — given her patients are 1,000-pound apex predators — Montano confides that it’s not scary, but it is difficult.

“I would say they do feel something … but because of their size it must feel like a little tug or a little pinch. It does not hurt … It is a bit uncomfortable,” Montano told McClatchy.

“If you saw the size of the catheter and the size of the animal, you would see it’s very small by comparison.”

Her rushed tests take place as a handful of researchers with OCEARCH tag the shark with a satellite tracker, and other scientists take blood, stool and bacteria samples. In all, the sharks are out of the water no more than 15 minutes, which means there is no time to waste, she says.

Etc.

Oh I can only assume that the Great White shark, just cathetered, will be especially menacing in the lineup.

I can only guess that he’ll eat any surfer within “arm’s” length.

Best not to surf until this sort of nasty research is over.

More as the story develops.