"It was such a dangerous position..."

It is often said, and very often by famous podcaster Scott Bass, that “surfers are the worst” but in my experience upon this blue globe surfers are generally “pretty ok” and if in some sort of oceanic trouble “valuable assets.”

Well, the old “surfers are valuable assets” adage played out, once again, on Australia’s south east coast last weekend when a boat capsized in the surf zone off Waniora Point in Bulli. Sean Brokman, 32, was out when he saw the mess.

“A few men were holding onto the boat without life jackets and they were obviously in serious trouble,” he told Yahoo! News. He and five others paddled over, assessed the situation and realized there were more people trapped inside.

Selflessly all of them ditched their boards and began diving under.

“It was such a dangerous position. If we had been hit by a wave we could have so easily been caught under there ourselves. The visibility was poor because of all the fuel and debris in the water but by some miracle I could see an air pocket in the bow of the boat with some legs, so I just went up and plucked that guy out.”

The unconscious man was full of water and sunk immediately after being pulled out but Brokman was “somehow managed to grab him and kick our way to the surface — I don’t know how.”

Another brave surfer, Sebastian James, meanwhile freed three more trapped men all by himself.

At this point in the harrowing tale Australian lifesavers on sleds arrived and began hauling the victims to shore where emergency teams had set up CPR stations. Three had gone into cardiac arrest and were rushed to nearby hospitals while a fourth was unable to be revived but it would have been a total loss if not for the selflessness, the strength of surfers.

The best people on earth.

Electric feel.

This is not surf adjacent news, on its face, as the two principals in the story neither surf nor SUP nor foil nor pretend to, unlike the world’s fifth richest man Mark Zuckerberg, but… Leonardo DiCaprio, one of the two principals, regularly features as the face of surf news on this very surf adjacent website.

Usually from his role in The Wolf of Wall Street.

Sometimes from his role in Django.

Once, maybe, from his role in Titanic.

Never from his role in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

And so surf adjacent we go but did you see DiCaprio publicly cuckold Lauren Sanchez, significant other of the world’s second richest man Jeff Bezos, at the LACMA Art + Film Gala in Los Angeles over the weekend?

The event celebrates under-celebrated wealthy people, I think, but just examine the photo of DiCaprio’s interaction with Sanchez and Bezos.

Whoa.

And now, has this sort of thing ever happened to you?

A public cuckolding?

How did you react?

Like Jeff Bezos showing off muscles and a Mark Zuckerberg-adjacent sense of humor?

Share and you just may receive a new badge.

One star.

The world’s greatest surfer, Kelly Slater, has long dabbled in the business arts launching companies like energy drink Purps, overseas surfboard manufacturer Slater Designs and sustainable outerwear brand OuterKnown during the course of his illustrious career.

Very smart to diversify portfolio etc. but what is it like to toil under the 11x World Champion’s yoke? Is he a gentle leader or a tyrant? A P.T. Barnum or a Steve Jobs?

Well, popular New Zealand career website Glassdoor.co.nz provides much insight, at least into OuterKnown, as many ex-employees have posted about their experiences. What do they say?

I loved working at Outerknown because their mission and purpose align with my passion for sustainability and environmental awareness. My fellow colleagues were amazing and I felt my manager did a wonderful job of listening to me and she always had my best interest in mind. Leaving Outerknown was an extremely tough decision, but I am happy to say my experience taught me so much that I will take with me as I grow in my career.

Prepare for Long Hours and Potential Burnout. Stressful work environment. You’re expected to do the work of several people/departments. When you ask upper management to hire additional help, your requests go ignored and nothing changes. Be prepared for burnout and long hours working here.

Management is not the worst I’ve experienced but absolutely mediocre at best. CEO is out of touch and so is the entire executive suite. Such a shame that HR is not able to help with the real problem, simply bad management and outdated leadership style.

Non-toxic and sustainable clothes, super toxic work culture and unsustainable work-life balance. Top-down “leadership” style driven by whatever hashtag social cause can make them money, instead of pushing for any meaningful change. Post a black square because it’s trending, and then fire non-white employees. Any challenge to the status quo is met with aggression and fragility. Incredibly toxic work environment with no clear paths to promotion. Inequitable pay with no transparency. Old-fashioned executives who like to think they’re progressive, but it’s the same boys club of every industry who prefer nepotism and blowing things up rather than fixing what’s right under their roof. High turnover and low pay, HR is a joke.

Outerknown requires Covid vaccine. Outerknown requires the covid vaccine. Sustainability is not a huge concern. This company does not promote from within.

OuterKnown requires a Covid vaccine?

Whoa.

Read more here.

Tougher than the rest.

There are not many occasions, as surfers, to feel sympathy for our Great White Shark neighbors, the selfsame that nibble our feets and cause us to hop on metaphorical sleds and reset, but there’s a 10-foot li’l nugget, currently swimming off the coast of South Australia, that is so battered, so bruised as to maybe become BeachGrit‘s new mascot.

The amazing footage was captured by underwater cinematographer Dean Spraakman who described the shark as “friendly” but said no one on his team had ever seen a creature in such condition.

“We see sometimes down there the white sharks tracking stingrays because they hunt and eat them and we thought they chase them into shallow reef areas where it’s quite sharp and it might get stuck and cause that sort of damage. You can only speculate what happened there and to be honest no one … ever really knows what causes that sort of damage to a shark, but the poor guy had a bit of a hard time I think. I noticed he had scars on him but I didn’t realise to what length until I reviewed the footage later.”

They wondered if the gouges might have been caused by boat propellers but dismissed the notion and continued to remain befuddled.

National Geographic explorer Professor Yannis Papastamatiou thought some of the wounds might have been from fighting with other sharks saying, “Females are often heavily scarred from mating behaviour but males can get bitten as well during dominance interactions between sharks, eg a larger shark may want a smaller shark and dominate the smaller individual with a non-fatal warning bite.”

Whatever the case, this shark is a working class hero and, you know, some girls, they want a handsome Dan or some good-lookin’ Joe on their arm. Some girls like a sweet-talkin’ Romeo. Well, ’round South Australia, baby, he learned you get what you can get so if you’re rough enough for love, honey, he’s tougher than the rest.