Two years ago at J-Bay, claims reached their high-water mark. Gabriel Medina, seen here, with a performance no judge or fan could resist. WSL

Academic Paper proves Claims work: “Both laypeople and surf judges were biased by claims in judging surfing performances with claims (scoring) better than performances without claims!”

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Science don't lie!

Some things in life sit beyond the tangible.

Not everything can be quantified. Nor should it be.

Why is the sky blue?

Why is water wet?

How does Chris Coté have such a hot wife?

Ageless questions that don’t always need an answer.

The Japanese have a word for the beauty inherent in these existential quandaries the world throws at us: yugen. There’s no direct English translation, but it’s best described as ‘an awareness of the universe that sits beyond words.’

The place beyond knowing.

As it relates to surfing, scientists shouldn’t be able to explain whether or not the sight of Tomas Hermes gesticulating wildly following a two foot close out re-entry will earn him the extra .1 needed to progress through to the non-elimination round.

They should be happy to just let it happen, with the reason for its effectiveness sitting someplace in the outerknown.

Yet, convinced claiming post-facto does matter and that they do influence judges, four German academics investigated “whether claims (postperformance nonverbal emotional expressions) influence people in evaluating performance during surf contests.

“To test this research question we sampled videos from professional surf contests and asked laypeople and surf judges to evaluate the performance in two online experiments.
A subset of the surfing performances showed surfers displaying post-performance emotional expressions (claims) whereas another subset showed the same performances without the claims (nonverbal celebration).”

It goes on.

“Both experiments provided evidence that both laypeople and surf judges were biased by claims in judging surfing performances with claims better than performances without claims. The findings are in line with social-cognitive models emphasizing the social consequences of emotion expressions. We discuss the implications of the findings for sport competitions that rely on judging sport performance.”

I’ll repeat that again, for effect.

Both experiments provided evidence that both laypeople and surf judges were biased by claims in judging surfing performances with claims better than performances without claims.

Illusions shattered! Claims do quantifiably work!

But what does this mean?

Now that their magic has been uncovered and the true effect of the claim has been documented with scientific rigour, should they be banned as an unfair advantage?

Filed under ‘unsportsmanlike conduct’?

Is this the death of the claim?

Slater famously called for donations to be made for any claim on a score lower than a nine, $1000 per point.

Would this be fairer?

Or should they be left alone as an endearing historical quirk?

Like spitting on the bride at Greek weddings, or befriending kneeboarders?

So much to unpack.

(Read paper here.)

They’re Back: Great White sharks boldly return to South African bay recently vacated due Killer Whale murder spree!

Chas Smith

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Wait... who's worse?

If there was one bright narrative in our current Shark Apocalypse it was that of South Africa’s False Bay, a onetime apex predator Great White shark feeding ground that became vacated when the Great Whites began getting eaten by vicious Killer Whales but… wait.

If Great Whites are apex predators then what does that make Killer Whales?

AApex predators?

Ol Dirty Bastards?

We must decide later because Great Whites have returned to False Bay after an eighteen month sissy li’l mama’s boy spree but don’t take my word for it. Take Newsweek’s.

A great white shark has been spotted in South Africa’s False Bay over 18 months after disappearing from the popular feeding ground. It was thought the predators left the area after killer whales arrived and started hunting them.

Shark-eating killer whales turned up in the Bay in 2015. Researchers started finding the carcasses of sevengill sharks that appeared to have been killed by orca. Two years later, five dead great whites were found with similar wound patterns. Examinations showed how they had been bitten in the area between their pectoral fins. Their livers were also missing.

Since then, great whites have been largely absent from False Bay, off Cape Town.

A similar phenomenon was previously recorded off the coast of San Francisco. When killer whales arrived at the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, the great white sharks would leave the feeding ground and not return for up to a year.

But they’re back now and does this mean Great White sharks are AAApex predators?

This whole business is feeling more Iran vs. USA every single day but I think until we get to the bottom of what’s actually happening no more surfing anywhere in any ocean.

AAAApex predators?

More as the story develops.

Out of this World: Kelly Slater has Oi Rio Pro jersey blasted into space, uses opportunity to bait flat-earthers!

Chas Smith

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Competitiveness never takes a day off.

And the accomplishments just keep stacking up, one on top of the other on top of the other. Youngest professional surfer to ever win a heat. Oldest professional surfer to ever win a heat. Eleven World Championships. BeachGrit‘s 2020 Man of the Year runner-up, just a few votes behind our friend the Great White shark.

But what can you give a man that has achieved everything?

Shoot his Oi Rio Pro contest singlet into space of course and let’s read how this monumental event came to be. Let’s study the fine print in Florida Today.

International Space Station astronaut Christina H. Koch, who has shown a love for surfing, even watching live telecasts while orbiting Earth, and photographing coastlines, recently displayed Slater’s signed No. 11 jersey from the Oi Rio Pro contest in Brazil, where the 47-year-old American lost to eventual winner Filipe Toledo in the Round of 16.

The jersey reached the ISS during a re-supply mission, undoubtedly thanks to the efforts of the World Surf League and NASA.

Kelly, himself, took to Instagram and let’s read his fine print too.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6_tBxbhoZF/

So my @wsl Oi Rio Pro Jersey made its way into lower earth orbit on the #ISS to my friend @astro_christina who is spending 11 months up there! (Her side hustle is taking pictures of coastlines/potential surf spots around the globe for me!) We recently did a live chat so I could get the lowdown on the Space Station. This coming Friday we will be doing a live public chat. When I have the details I’ll pass them along. In the meantime, give me some ideas below of questions you would ask an astronaut spending the years in space…what they eat, how they stay entertained, how much time they just gaze at the earth, etc. I wonder if we’ll get any flat earthers?

A wonderful time and place to bait flat-earthers. Perfect even.

Do you think they’ll engage?

Very quickly, though, do all Kelly’s competition singlets list every one of his championships?

More as the story develops.

Analyze This: Milwaukee-based psychiatrist invents progressive new surfboard technology from coffee bags!

Chas Smith

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Wash the hypocrisy away!

But did you watch Ricky Gervais’s gorgeous Golden Globes’ monologue from a few days ago? Oh, you must. The world’s second funniest man laid absolute waste to elite Hollywood hypocrisy, declaring at the end that they all work for gross polluters so spare all the green-washed, human rights-tinged speeches.

He’s right. Leo DiCaprio by hisself accounts for more naughty gasses in the atmosphere than a whole village of trash burning Peruvians. The only grosser polluter is Kelly Slater.

And us.

Our boards are downright toxic, no question about it, but… we like to surf so… somebody else should be greener.

No?

Well, a Milwaukee psychiatrist named Ken Cole has invented a progressive new surfboard technology from coffee bags and can we learn about him? Can we feel better about ourselves, slightly? Lets right now.

“Every single surfboard — approximately 400,000 are made each year and of those 99.999 are made out of foam and fiberglass and also toxic resins. And it’s going to go into the water and eventually break down,” he explains.

So, Cole decided to try making his own in his garage about three years ago. “Much to my wife’s and my family’s chagrin because making surfboards as you can see is extremely dusty.” Cole adds, “But that was the first time I used jute.”

Jute is a vegetable fiber used to make coffee bags. Thanks to a local roaster, Cole stitches donated bags together. They cover the core hand-cut by Cole.

Jute eliminated the need for fiberglass.

“So this board will have zero fiberglass whatsoever …. The process is a pretty long one because what I have to do is lay this jute down and pour bio-resin on it. All surfboards use resin of some sort — again an oil-based product,” Cole says.

He opts instead for a plant-based resin. “So you pour the resin on this, it eventually cured and then you have to massage it in and then you have a solid surfboard.”

Jute.

Are you in?

Kelly Slater should be.

Damned hypocrite.

Queensland Government reveals hunt for Great White spotted at new artificial reef: “Human life is absolutely paramount”

Derek Rielly

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Fishermen say the reef has become a magnet for mackerel, a popular dish of Great Whites.

A couple of hundred yards off the northern end of Palm Beach, just south of Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast, is a just-completed artificial reef, which was designed to stop erosion on the area’s beaches.

The reef is also very good for fishing and, momentarily, featured a pretty wild righthand slab until authorities blasted a shallow chunk of reef to remove the danger.

On Christmas Day, the beach was shut-down when two teenage surfers came in panicked saying they’d been circled by a Great White and that it had come so close they could see the markings on its dorsal fin.

Fishermen say the reef has become a magnet for mackerel, a popular dish for Great Whites.

Now, after further sightings, six drumlines have been installed two hundred yards further out to catch the Great White.

Palm Beach shark. Source: 9News

“Human life is absolutely paramount,” said Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and said the drumlines would remain “as long as they need to.”

How do drumlines work?

It’s simple and it ain’t pretty.

A baited hook is suspended from a plastic float which is anchored to the sea bed.

If it’s a regular drumline, the shark hangs there, dying slowly, until it’s removed.

If the drumline is the so-called SMART (Shark-Management-Alert-in-Real-Time) version, a satellite-linked GPS communications unit is attached to the baited hook. When the shark takes the bait, the communication unit sends its location to the drumline operator who tags, relocates and releases the animal.

Do they work?

Yep, but they’re messy and do a lot of killing of non-lethal animals.

From the ABC, 

Fact Check’s assessment of historical shark attack figures and discussions with experts suggest that the use of traditional drum lines and shark nets do markedly reduce the incidence of shark attack when implemented on a regular and consistent basis, although this comes at a cost to marine life.

Professor Colin Buxton of the University of Tasmania has told Fact Check “the use of shark nets and drum lines is a proven way of reducing shark attack, however the public need to understand and acknowledge that this works by killing sharks”.

Photo: Justin Jay/@justinjayphoto
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