Massive Great White Shark gets caught in New Zealand fishing net and dies; experts say not the famed “Taranaki Terror!”

"Tourists splattered with blood..."

Shark experts and enthusiasts will recall, pre-Covid-19, when it was reported here that an “apocalyptic mass human extinction event” was amassing off New Zealand’s once-bucolic shore in the form of “thousands of Great Whites.”

Well, the beasts have arrived in even greater numbers than the nightmare scenario and in greater sizes too.

But maybe you’ve heard of the “Taranaki Terror,” what has been described by eyewitnesses as a 20 foot Great White Shark that swims as fast as a bullet and eats seals in front of sheet-white tourists, covering them in red, red blood.

The Terror has been cruising for three-weeks, though some don’t believe, calling it a “complete load of bloody hype.”

I stand with the surfers, however, who have seen it leaping into the air and the bounty hunters who are out trying to catch it, as it’s jaw is worth a reported $30,000.

Another massive Great White was recently tangled in a New Zealand fishing net and perished. It was not the Taranaki Terror and its jaw was donated to science.

Where will your jaw go when you finally expire?

I hope mine is used as a weapon to strike down the next 1000 CEOs of organized professional surfing.

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JJF and Mark Cunningham. | Photo: Justin Jay/@justinjayphoto

Warshaw: The bodysurfer Mark Cunningham is “mindful Zen-infused chinchilla-trimmed Ferrari perfection from takeoff to beach landing!”

The king of the sea!

Sunday is Matt Warshaw day, when surfing’s sole historian and its most quotable writer looses a sprawling stream-of-consciousness email upon his subscribers.

Today, Warshaw riffs on the North Shore bodysurfer, Mark Cunningham, a man who is to the North Shore what Churchill was to his besieged people in 1940: an unwavering symbol of determined righteousness and with a sorta off-kilter brilliance.

Read and learn:

Cunningham is of course the world’s most revered bodysurfer. For many of you, he is the only revered bodysurfer, but that is because so little attention has been paid to bodysurfers over the past 50 or so years.

Bodysurfing got way more attention in the earlies; Ron Drummond wrote a whole book about it, and Russell Hughes’ one brush with fame came with this long board-free ride in the ’68 World Surfing Championships, as seen on Wide World of Sports. Bruce Jenkins, in this excellent Mark Cunningham profile, highlights some of the first great bodysurfers.

The surf leash broke up surfing and bodysurfing, which up to that point had been united since the beginning—wipeout, lose board, bodysurf, repeat— and not long afterward Cunningham more or less became our one-man repository for what some people think of as the purest form of wave-riding.

It is often said that Cunningham is amphibious, which is true but incomplete.

It is often said that Cunningham is amphibious, which is true but incomplete. Yes, he is amphibious. He is also Ferrari. Photo: DaFin

Yes, he is amphibious.

He is also Ferrari.

He is chinchilla fur, knee-length and silk-lined.

Cunningham is as powerful and smooth as he is fish-like, in other words.

He wanted to bodysurf Pipeline the way Lopez board-surfed it, and that is what he did. No tricks, no wasted motion. Just mindful Zen-infused chinchilla-trimmed Ferrari perfection from takeoff to beach landing.

I have to tell this last story, even though it is self-serving and makes it appear as if Mark bought his way into EOS, which of course he did not.

While roaming a distant corner of the Surf Expo tradeshow in Orlando two years ago, I found Mark sitting alone at a booth, his magnificent head of white hair full and lofty, looking every bit the hawk-nosed crinkly-eyed younger brother of Nick Lowe.

A perennial EOS subscriber, Mark clapped me on the back and raved about the site and the importance of surf history and whatnot, and maybe because I did such a good job at maintaining cool he suddenly reared back and said, “Are you still taking donations?” I nodded. He pulled out an ancient two-tone Velcro wallet, ripped it open and fished out the only bill therein, a twenty, which he looked at for a moment then folded once and handed over.

He frowned.

“That’s not enough,” he muttered.

With a snap of the fingers, he squatted down, rummaged through a duffle bag, and came up with a shrink-wrapped box of Mauna Loa chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, which he also handed over, then once again clapped my back and sent me off with more uplifting remarks.

Dammit, he did buy his way onto EOS!

(Mark’s EOS page went up this week, as did his Above the Roar interview, and here’s his own short but wise bodysurfing primer.)

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Listen: Longtom on twenty-year blood feud with Nick Carroll, why the WSL will change hands for one dollar and how the Kelly Slater wavepool is an “evolutionary blind alley!”

Come get baptised in dirty water…

Today’s episode of Dirty Water, number eighteen, contains the forthright opinions of writer Steve “Longtom” Shearer, a man who believes in the doctrine of eternal punishment, regards baptism by immersion as essential and is that most formidable of composite forces – a dreamer who thinks and a thinker who dreams.

Along with Charlie Smith, various topics are broached, Steve’s multi-decade feud with the great Nick Carroll, whether or not media has a responsibility to report on potentially catastrophic drug use by athletes (Steve recounts seeing Andy Irons at Snapper in 2010 “looking like his life force was gone”), the fading star that is the WSL and its ambitious $150 million self-valuation and why Kelly Slater’s wavepool is an “evolutionary blind alley.”

Leave a review, good or bad it don’t matter as long as it’s entertaining, send a screenshot and your address and we’ll outfit you with a pretty tail-pad which you can examine here.

(Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, TuneIn + Alexa, iHeartRadio, Overcast, Pocket Cast, Castro, Castbox, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Deezer and Listen Notes.)

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Patriot: Momentum builds for Kelly Slater statue to be erected in President Trump’s newly proposed “National Garden of American Heroes!”

Lift your voice!

On July 3rd, while standing in front of South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore, President Donald J. Trump unveiled his administration’s plan to build a National Garden of American Heroes which will be “a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live.”

“A very fine idea…” I thought and quickly went searching for the Executive Order, scrolled to the list of those to be included in the National Garden of American Heroes…

The National Garden should be composed of statues, including statues of John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Daniel Boone, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Henry Clay, Davy Crockett, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, Billy Graham, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Douglas MacArthur, Dolley Madison, James Madison, Christa McAuliffe, Audie Murphy, George S. Patton, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Jackie Robinson, Betsy Ross, Antonin Scalia, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington, and Orville and Wilbur Wright.

…and became intensely sad.

No 11 x World Champion, greatest surfer to ever live, from Cocoa Beach but now Lemoore Kelly Slater?

Impossible so I read again and became violently sad.

But then, a spark of inspiration struck me right between the eyes.

It is incumbent upon us, American surfers (Australians, South Africans, Brazilians, British too if you all feel inclined), to have Kelly Slater’s statue included.

How?

I think we start by contacting Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis (here) or simply [email protected]

You can use my email to him, below, or create your own.

Dear Governor DeSantis,

As you are certainly aware, President Trump recently announced a National Garden of American Heroes which is a fine idea but, sadly, the list of American Heroes to be included in the park has one glaring hole.

Florida’s own Kelly Slater.

The 11x World Champion is also inarguably the greatest surfer to ever live. His exploits in the water are only matched by his passion for the environment on land, where he builds large, beautiful wave pools. 

Kelly Slater is a model citizen, donating his time to many causes near to his heart, namely helping provide guidance and correct thought to those who believe the earth is flat via Instagram.

The inclusion of a Kelly Slater statue in the National Garden of American Heroes will be a wonderful day for both Florida and the United States of America, a land that is lucky to call him a son.

Thank you for your consideration.

Chas Smith

(But if you copy mine don’t put Chas Smith. Put Shane Beschen.)

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Kolohe Andino sends pointed July 4 message to fans: “I will never apologise for being American!”

“Equal rights for all, special privileges for none."

A little history, if y’don’t mind a real quick detour.

Between 1966 and 1976 the original dirty bastard Mao Zedong (didn’t wash, brush his teeth, had body lice etc) mounted his Cultural Revolution, tearing down statues, outlawing wrong-think, seizing property, discrediting, harassing and disappearing noted scientists.

In his famous tract the Little Red Book, Mao explained his reasons thus,

“Our objective is to struggle against and crush those people in authority who are taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois academic ‘authorities’ and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art…”

Sounds familiar?

Yeah, it do.

Now, despite it being the year of Antifa, BLM etc, Kolohe Andino is proud as hell to be American and ain’t one to let his country’s Independence Day swing by without pushing his chest out, even if a patriot’s head above the parapet is ripe for attack.

On Instagram, Kolohe writes,

Happy Birthday to the USA. Feel truly honored, blessed and grateful to be from this glorious land. I will never apologize for being American and fly those colors proud. In my mind, everyday is July 4th.

And then,

pointedly,

Kolohe quotes the architects of the modern American independent state,

“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature. “ – Benjamin Franklin

“Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.”  – Thomas Jefferson

“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” – Benjamin Franklin

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCObt-ij0Iu/

The response?

“Bravo,” wrote his shaper Matt Biolos.

Evan Geiselman, threatened with “being cancelled” yesterday for liking a Trump tweet, wrote, “Incredible.”

Brett Simpson, shaper Doc Lausch, Torrey Meister, filmer Peter King and various other notables lined up to praise the young patriot.

A few notes of dissent, some saying it “wasn’t the time” etc, and this from Australian softboard manufacturer Drag Board Co, “Staunch supremacy while ya country’s gone down the shitter. M8.”

I like Kolohe and it ain’t a minor thing to be an American patriot.

Whether you agree or not, kid should be praised for his ability to form his own opinions.

Thoughts?

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