A fabulous and biting what-if… 

On day fourteen of Kai Lenny’s inadvertent live-streaming of his own decomposition the debate continues to rage across the world concerning the ethics of Instagram’s continued broadcast of, and thus capitalisation on, the unsightly but also in many ways very natural gradual consumption of Lenny’s body by various North Atlantic marine life.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CHIfLxMB2sa/

Although a search for his body immediately after that fateful incident at Nazaré proved fruitless various oceanographers and tech experts alike claim Lenny’s body should be discoverable through the study of North Atlantic currents and Lenny’s GoPro GPS capability.

But is that what the formally highly accomplished Hawaiian waterman and formally Disney prince-featured but now dead Kai would have wanted?

Kai lived in the water throughout his life, and it seems somehow fitting that his body should be commended, however unintended and untimely the circumstances might be, to the same waters and waves he rode and 360’d the faces of with less apparent difficultly than you or I might take a piss on a moving train.

Likewise, the live broadcast of his body’s gradual surrendering of its wholeness to the ocean and its inhabitants.

Sure, Kai never could have guessed that the onset of rigor-mortis would freeze his hand and wrist into the perfect angle whereby we as a species,  as a people; surfers and norms alike, could log-in and share the experience of watching an octopus suck out his left eye (day five) and a hake nibble off the tip of his nose (day seven).

While he might not have aired any support of the idea when he was alive would Kai have been completely adverse to it?

He hung onto that selfie stick during all those hold-downs for a reason: he loved to document his life and broadcast it to the world. He loved to share so many aspects of his surfing life, so why not this final chapter?

What could be more of an intimate moment than watching Kai’s skin change from the mocha-coloured glow of the chiselled twenty-something athlete to the pallid grey of a bloated and rotting cadaver?

Why not air his literal giving back to the ocean?

Forget for a moment the segments of wetsuit no doubt destined to choke some unwitting marine mammal to death, but instead focus on the little bits of skin and flesh detaching and floating off to become individual particles in the constant exchange of nutrients and minerals that is the earth’s natural equilibrium?

Sheer poetry.

Meanwhile the feed continues to act as something of a digital vigil for surfers, celebrities, and brands to leave their own emoji-laden tributes to the deceased surf hero as well as links to their homepages and relevant socials.

Lenny’s sponsor Red Bull continue to host the stream on their website, alongside limited-edition caps, shirts and sweaters available only as long as Lenny’s head remains connected to his spinal cord.

BeachGrit will continue to monitor the situation as it develops.

You're putting people right into a confined lineup with a shallow concrete bottom. There's no barriers to entry. Plus, you're adding booze into the equation.

(Editor’s note: Was New Jersey surfer Fabrizio Stabile’s death at the celebrated Waco wavepool in 2018 caused by negligence and the matter covered up, as alleged by his family in their ongoing wrongful death lawsuit? Today, in part four, click to read parts one, two, and three, a former employee describes a new two-million dollar filtration system and an owner oblivious to any previous danger.)

After shutting down in October 2018, BSR reopened its doors on March 22nd, 2019, claiming improved water quality and a new wave.

The pool is no longer dyed cotton candy blue and now boasts a “state-of-the-art” filtration system built and implemented by Water Tech Solutions and approved by the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District.

According to the Waco Tribune-Herald, the filtration system cost $2 million.

The pool reportedly has additional measures to ensure filtration. An added lagoon helps with filtration, and Royal Wiseman, a general manager, has called the water “drinking-water quality.”

The pool still receives its water from the “craters:” thirty-foot-high mounds of dirt that store the water and act as cooling towers.

According to a former BSR employee, as of the 2019 season, those craters were not tested or treated.

“When BSR had their own independent study, last year [in 2019], after we had filtration . . . they decided that after that we would no longer treat or test the water in the craters. No one was supposed to go to the craters after that. The way the craters were set up . . . made it just like a petri dish for microbial life. Nobody treats it or tests it anymore. We don’t go up there. We open the valves, but we don’t go up there. Or that was the rule [in 2019].”

The purported sale of BSR is still pending. The court heard oral arguments concerning that order on November 4, 2020.

There is little end in sight for the litigation. The court order stopping the sale is still on appeal and it’s unclear when the Texas Tenth Court of Appeals will make a ruling.

Once there is a decision, the case will be remanded to the McClennan County District Court for a final judgment, though the American legal system isn’t particularly well known for its efficiency, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only slowed the courts.

Settlement doesn’t seem likely either.

The parties rejected a mediation order in March 2020, and the litigation has become increasingly hostile.

The pool is currently open for business. There have not been any additional reports of Naegleria fowleria.

It’s quite easy to villainize in these types of stories, but it’s important to note that the park’s owner Stuart Parsons Jr seemed oblivious to the danger.

Before Stabile’s death, his children used to go play at the surf pool.

A former BSR employee said about Parsons: “He had never considered  possibilities of that water being dangerous to the point that his kids were in the water as much as anyone else. You’d get there in the morning after the beach was raked at night and there’d be three or four little sets of footprints where him and his kids had been playing on the beach.”

Fabrizio’s won’t be the last death at a surf pool.

You’re putting people right into a confined lineup with a shallow concrete bottom. There’s no barriers to entry. I have no business surfing some of the new slabs, but because I can competently trim I can “paddle out” there.

And then I hesitate on that slab and go over the falls head first into the concrete bottom.

Plus, you’re adding booze into the equation. When I’m too drunk to surf I won’t make the paddle out at my local, but I could definitely wade out into a pool.

Skiing is a mess of negligence. My guess is the wave pools will follow.