Controversial author slaps back at eminent historian after accusation of cut-rate reportage: “Considering all angles on their merits, one can only conclude that people were surfing in China thousands of years before Polynesia!”

Logical leaping too.

Yesterday afternoon, a sun-dappled one in Southern California, fireworks exploded in the ether when eminent Italian surf historian and coach Nicolla “Nik” Zanella slipped a well-manicured hand from a goat kid glove and used it to slap controversial author Chas Smith across the face.

The troubles began days ago when Smith reported on Zanella’s work digging into the root of Chinese surfing and titled the think-piece Italian surf historian declares people surfing in China thousands of years before Polynesia: “There’s some who tread on drifting wood performing hundreds of water tricks, having fun, each displaying great mastery!”

Zanella, in a furious missive to the editor, responded:

Who did it first was not the scope of my research, but this time frame is almost simultaneous with what was happening in Polynesia. Affirming that I declared that surfing happened in China ‘Thousands of years before Polynesia’ is blatantly false and casts a bad light on my professionalism.

I hope you have the decency of erasing that article and learn to investigate what you publish in the future, what you stated was not in the SCMP article, nor in my book, nor in any interview that I ever gave to the many media, all more professional than BeachGrit, that covered my book and research. A simple google search would have clarified it.

Smith, very much insulted, quickly turned to the aforementioned google search, employed his iconic-adjacent combination of rudimentary math and logical leaping, to discover that Tahiti was first settled in the 5th century B.C. and assumed it would take the proto-Polynesians a couple hundred-ish years to learn the art of surfboard shaping, sorting out the person nearest the breaking part of the wave has priority, etc. which would put the first Tahitian surfer at, or around, the 3rd century B.C.

China, on the other hand, has been inhabited by Homo erectuses for over a million years. Hangzhou, where surfing may have begun, had a fine neolithic population at least 12,000 years before the birth of Christ.

Now, Zanella quotes a Song Dynasty (960 – 1279) poet in his interview with the august South China Morning Post. To wit:

“Hundreds of brave watermen … with unfastened hair and tattoos, holding coloured flags, race to the water … they paddle towards the oncoming waves … then they leap up and perform a hundred manoeuvres without getting the tail of their flags even slightly wet. This is how they show off their skill. Hence the nobles reward them with silver prizes.”

If that is not describing a World Qualifying Series event, than I am not a surf journalist.

It must be inferred that QSes take at least ten-ish centuries to get fully up and running what with point systems, defining the excellent range, sorting the flags (read: singlets), having proto-Turpel get his descriptions of the action down, etc.

Considering all angles on their merits, one can only conclude that people were surfing in China thousands of years before Polynesia, or at the very least that was what Zanella is suggesting.

As the South China Morning Post puts it after an equally thorough analysis of Zanella’s findings, “Surfing may have started in China, long before anyone elsewhere picked up a board to ride a wave.”

En garde!


Caroline Marks harvesting maximum points at Surf Ranch. | Photo: WSL

WSL surfing tour in shock as teenage heir apparent to world title tests positive for COVID-19; withdraws from today’s LA-Sydney charter flight!

"Very unfortunate news."

World number two Caroline Marks has told fans she ain’t gonna be on the bird to Sydney tonight after testing positive for COVID-19, a gritty lil disease that has otherwise shut down international travel and torn hell out of ol peoples’ withered air bags.

Taking to Instagram, Marks, who is nineteen and was 2018’s rookie of the year, told her 179,000 fans,

“Some very unfortunate news, I tested positive for Covid-19. I will not be making the charter flight to Austrailia tonight. I am following all the Covid protocols and do expect to be competing when I’m cleared. I want to wish all the WSL competitors and staff a safe flight. I’ll Keep everyone posted.”

It ain’t a tour without the best of the title contenders and Marks, at forefront of an advancing army of wild talents that’ll clean out the existing roster, is still a favourite to win the crown, the addition of events at Teahupoo and Pipeline considered to her advantage.

As Longtom wrote eight months ago when the tour changes were announced, “The gals are back in Teahupoo. A brave, bold move. Which will likely deliver copious laydays, zero-point heat totals and a Caroline Marks dynasty into the forseeable future.”

Various world champions, including Stephanie Gilmore, Mick Fanning, Lisa Andersen  and Italo Ferriera all posted kind words in the comment pane.

“That sucks. Chin up. Get healthy and get over here!” wrote three-timer Mick.


An early attempt at surfing in the Middle Kingdom.

Eminent historian eviscerates controversial author of Cocaine and Surfing for inaccuracies in reporting birth of surfing in China: “This time you passed the mark and put false words in my mouth”

"Affirming that I declared that surfing happened in China ‘Thousands of years before Polynesia’ is blatantly false and casts a bad light on my professionalism."

Three days ago, it was reported, here, that an Italian historian had made the stunning discovery that surfing began in China “thousands of years before Polynesia.”

Wrote Chas Smith,

Nicolla “Nik” Zanella stumbled on his discovery in 2006 while visiting a Buddhist temple in Kunming in the southern Yunnan province. There he saw a 19th century bas-relief depicting a group of arhats, or those who have reached Nirvana, out amongst the waves.

One, in particular, stood out.

“The guy was standing up, his pose was exactly what we teach – back foot flat, front foot at a 45-degree angle, looking 5m in front of the board. And his face – he looked stoked,” Zanella told the South China Morning Post.

It was so captivating that he climbed down 5000 years of Chinese literature, finding Song Dynasty poet Zhou Mi’s work on the way. Zanella translates, “Hundreds of brave watermen … with unfastened hair and tattoos, holding coloured flags, race to the water … they paddle towards the oncoming waves … then they leap up and perform a hundred manoeuvres without getting the tail of their flags even slightly wet. This is how they show off their skill. Hence the nobles reward them with silver prizes.”

In a lengthy email to BeachGrit, received today, Zanella has eviscerated Chas Smith, the celebrated and much loved author of best-selling books Welcome to Paradise Now Go To Hell, Cocaine and Surfing, a Sordid History of Surfing’s Greatest Love Affair and Reports From Hell.

Zanella writes,

Who did it first was not the scope of my research, but this time frame is almost simultaneous with what was happening in Polynesia. Affirming that I declared that surfing happened in China ‘Thousands of years before Polynesia’ is blatantly false and casts a bad light on my professionalism.

I hope you have the decency of erasing that article and learn to investigate what you publish in the future, what you stated was not in the SCMP article, nor in my book, nor in any interview that I ever gave to the many media, all more professional than BeachGrit, that covered my book and research. A simple google search would have clarified it.

As an avid surfer myself and a former surf editor I understand your need for click-bait titles in a starved out surf media environment.

But this time you passed the mark and put false words in my mouth.

I ask you to erase the article. I’m willing to send you a copy of my book so that you can read it and understand the scope and direction of my research.

The author of the story is yet to respond to the claims.


Business: Luxury surf resort hires professional surf photographer to capture guests’ every head-dip, each four-stage pop-up!

Everyone is a star!

If we have learned but one thing in the World Surf League CEO Erik Logan era it is that vulnerable adult learners love to have their photographs taken whilst surfing. Love to have their photographs taken pre-surf, post-surf but especially mid-surf.

ELo’s Instagram feed is a veritable garden of watery delights. Head dips, mid-wave bottom turns, squeals of joy.

The shame that used to be associated with surfing poorly vanished as the VAL utopia dawns.

A luxury surf resort in the Maldives, finger to wind, just hired a professional surf photographer to snap each guest at their lineup finest.

According to Travel + Leisure, Niyama Private Islands just welcomed Erick Proost for a three-month residency. Proost, the magazine writes, “is a seasoned cinematographer and photographer specializing in surfing and water shots. His previous clients included world champions and professional surfers Adriana De Souza and Gabriel Medina. He’s also shot and produced several surf movies, though his passion lies with photography, bringing together man and nature in one epic surf shot.”

He will accompany the boat out in the morning, shoot from the water all day, then make himself available for surf chit-chat at the resort’s rum bar featuring “snacks and a reggae soundtrack softly playing from the speakers.”

Very 1.5%.

But if you had your own surf photographer, a la John John Florence, which wave would you surf if looking your absolute finest was the end goal?

Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch?

A safe, if uninspired, choice.


Whatever your feelings on the matter, the event does make for a compelling photograph. | Photo: Port Hacking Game Fishing Club

Ocean lovers mourn “execution” of half-ton Tiger Shark by sports fishermen just off popular Sydney surf beach: “This animal was one of the important fishes in the sea!”

“I felt sick, because sharks have been around for 400 million years and it’s only in the past 50 years that humans have been doing such a great job of getting rid of them."

Four days ago, a group of sports fishermen from the Port Hacking Game Fishing Club, competing in a contest off Cronulla in Sydney’s south, hooked an almost half-ton Tiger shark as big as their boat.

The men wrestled the fish for almost an hour before killing it and bringing it to shore for the obligatory victory photos. 

Tigers aren’t protected in NSW waters so a fisherman can do pretty much what he wants. 

Catch ‘em, drag ‘em board, belt ‘em over the head. Take selfies.

Death ain’t pretty, of course. 

And, ocean and wildlife lovers lit up, as you can imagine. 

“I had two reactions,” University of WA Professor Jessica Meeuwig, who is the director of the uni’s Centre for Marine Futures, told The West Live. “I felt sick, because sharks have been around for 400 million years and it’s only in the past 50 years that humans have been doing such a great job of getting rid of them. And the other thing is, I felt sad, because a lot of recreational fishers truly love the ocean and they love the wildlife that’s in the ocean, and they’re probably not aware that killing animals like that is basically ocean vandalism.”

Two years earlier, a ninety-pound eight year old boy from the same club spent an entire day reeling in a nine-hundred pound Tiger twenty miles off Bondi.

“The majority of sharks that are caught are let go,” he said. “With this one, fisheries will take samples for research, and the jaws will get moulded into in a plaque on the wall for Jayden. The rest is fish and chips.”

Sub-bantamweight boy vs ultra-heavy Tiger.

He that is without sin, of course, throw your rocks. 

Know, 

All those pretty little lambs, mewing like the babies they are, throats hacked open, roasted in ovens, presented as happy family meal; the calves torn from mammy at birth for veal, described as “the pale and tender meat of a very sick baby cow who was tortured to death.”

All the happy salmon and tuna we mow through, gasping on the decks of fishing boats or living miserable lives in filthy pens before getting the knife through the head.

The male chicks thrown into slicing machines, useless, mostly for any commercial purpose. 

And on and on.