Many, many waves.

This Coronavirus Apocalypse will end soon, I feel, or at least when those cowering indoors, reading scientific journals etc. find their passports and remember they aren’t 80-years-old. A misplaced passport is certainly a troubling thing. Haunting even if no imminent trip is planned.

It will end soon and the under-80s will get back to livin’. Back to dreamin’. Back to surfin’.

Of course, it may be difficult to travel for surf in the near future. Airline bankruptcies, social distancing rules, worldwide economic collapse will likely put a damper on the whole shootin’ match but thankfully the world’s greatest surfer, Kelly Slater, has gifted humanity artificial wave technology and we will all soon be surf tripping to near-ish by industrial parks to play the Pastime of Kings.

Kelly’s team is busy now in Australia, bulldozing koalas in the most environmentally friendly way, but what about Surf Lakes there in Yeppoon. Do you recall?

It was my favorite of all the Surf Ranches due its dystopian design and how much better will that rusty plunger look now that our world actually is a dystopia?

Phenomenal.

It is still my favorite because, as revealed today, the Mad Max-esque machine is being tooled to “hundreds of millions of waves a year for decades.”

Shall we read?

Development of the system was commissioned by Surf Lakes, an Australian company that now has a full-scale functioning prototype operating in the town of Yeppoon, Queensland. A number of groups are reportedly interested in licensing the technology, which should happen once its creators have ensured that it’s ready for commercialization.

“We need to ensure the wave machine can deliver hundreds of millions of waves every year for decades for people to enjoy, and for surf park owners to confidently build businesses and developments around,” says Dr. Chris Hawley, managing director of Engenuity Solutions. “The data from the prototype testing is also being used to optimize the performance of the machine further, ensure ease of construction, improve power efficiencies and bring the highest standard of safety in design to every element.”

Amazing.

But how many waves a day?

I have been helping my young daughter with her first grade math in quarantine so let me run the numbers.

Let’s go on the low side of “hundreds of millions” and say 300,000,000.

That would be:

25,000,000 waves a month.

833,333 waves a day.

34,7222 waves an hour.

578 waves a minute.

9 waves a second.

I don’t even know if a jackhammer can run that hot.

Brilliant.

With a bullet!

A BeachGrit podcast criticizing Kelly Slater’s environmentalism has prompted a string of social media blocks from the world’s greatest surfer in which he may have derided his critics as “loser types” either internally or out loud.

While social media blocks are common for the eleven-time world champ, this series has the flavor of personal grudge. The podcast, called Dirty Water ep. 7, was produced by a group of Kelly Slater’s biggest fans, Chas Smith and Derek Rielly whom prominently co-founded a magazine Slater once boycotted.

In the episode, co-starring Steve “Longtom” Shearer, Chas Smith riffed on former 1984 champion, Tom Carroll, and what a quiet, non-pollutive life he lives.

In contrast, Dirty Water ep. 7 had Longtom opening with, “Bill Finnegan is going to write a hundred words on Kelly Slater, what’s going to be in the first sentence?”

“Greatest surfer of all time,” said Chas.

“Loves Instagram,” Derek said.

“What else?” asked Longtom. “Starts with E.”

“Empath?” said Chas

Longtom boomed, “Environmentalist! That’s how the world knows him!”

“Everything Kelly does has an eco-centric point in it. But, for reals, Kelly Slater has done more damage to the earth than any non-politician of the last decade. That man has travelled, spewing carbon into the atmosphere, the amount of surfboards he’s chewed through, he’s the most damaging human of the last ten years.” Chas leaned in.

“And draining the Coolum wetlands to build a canal estate makes him number one with a bullet,” added Longtom.

BeachGrit is a surf website launched in 2013 by disaffected anti-depressives looking to “defeat boredom and sycophantism” in 2020, even at the expense of being blocked on social media by the world’s greatest surfer.

“Being blocked on social media for those who support the right to a slight chuckle over self-described ‘surf fans’ who do not is a worthy effort,” the group’s mission statement reads.

More as the story develops.

I'm a savage.

Dark day. Bleak days. Pandemic disease rushing wildly around the globe, indiscriminately killing obese 80-year-old diabetics with underlying heart conditions. Economic collapse immanent. Surfing criminalized. Rock salt lamps and their warm ionized air, the only thing keeping humanity from complete implosion.

But always a silver lining and today we find ours in the animal kingdom where classy, bougie, ratchet female Great White sharks are in the midst of an inspiring #MeToo moment.

Shall we turn our frowns upside down?

Something tore into a 12-foot shark off the East Coast, taking part of a fin and leaving teeth marks around its hulking body, according to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

Photos of the battered shark (named Chex) were shared Saturday on Facebook, showing the most striking of its “battle scars” was a missing top lobe from its thick tail (caudal) fin.

“We do not know how this happened, but our science team can hypothesize that the (tail) injury could have been caused by a boat strike or an interaction with another shark. If you look around Chex’s gill slits, you can see the scar of a bite from another shark,” the conservancy wrote.

“Unfortunately, we do not know why another shark would bite Chex. It is rare to record interactions between these animals.”

OCEARCH, another shark research agency, has speculated that male great white sharks may bite each other in the North Atlantic while competing for females in mating season, or the females themselves bite males to ward off unwanted sexual advances.

And there we have it. “The females themselves bite males to ward off unwanted sexual advances. “Chex (read: Harvey Weinstein) swimming around just assuming every female is his for the taking. Being both an apex predator and an apex sexual predator but sorry, bud, TIME’S UP and there goes the tail.

I truly hope that other fish and whales take note and also that male Great Whites start behaving with more decorum.