"How am I going to help the dolphins? These things are killing machines!"

Mark Healey, from Sunset Beach (Hawaii, not California), is a stunt man, pro big-wave surfer and man of the wilderness, beach and garden.

In 2011, he was filmed riding on the back of a Great White shark.

“If they’re going to take you out you’re fucked!” he said.

On a recent “strike mission” to Mexico, Healey was privy to the rare sight of killer whales, also known as Orcas, an abbreviation of the Latin name Orcinus meaning “of the kingdom of the dead”, hunting and killing a dolphin, an intelligent mammal well-known for their water orgies.

Healey, who is forty-one, and who takes his food from the wild with various instruments of death, is not squeamish.

“Nature does not optimise for mercy. Watch these highly intelligent animals get destroyed and not in the most humane way possible!”

"I fucking fucked up, but that's the generation I came from."

Let’s recap.

Five days ago, Andy Lyon, the Malibu realtor and First Point surfer of fifty years achieved a considerable notoriety when he threw a rock into another man’s surfboard following an entanglement, the video of the event going viral.

Lyon, who is fifty-nine, lost his job, had his address published and a beat-down was suggested for his four-year-old kid Glider.

The first time I spoke to Lyon, which was just after the video took off, he was upbeat about the imbroglio saying, “You know, it’s a good ride right now… I’m embracing this. People say it ended his career but, it’s like, shit’s taking off. This is the beginning!” 

A podcast followed, to mixed response, older surfers tending to side with Lyon’s street justice and those new to their game in thrall to the utopian ideal of every wave a gift that must be shared. 

Today, I found a different Andy Lyon. He was carrying groceries into his house and was a little circumspect about the event, worn down by the attention, and the relentless ring of his telephone, mostly by me, I must admit. 

I called ‘cause he’d emailed to say he’d been in contact with the guy whose board he hurled a rock into, the rock vs board technique perfected, of course, by Fort Point locals in San Francisco eight months ago. 

Kitesurfing instructor and foil-boarding aficionado, John von Tesmar, had lost his leashless foil board and watched helplessly as it washed to the shore and was then attacked by an angry local who jerked a rock above his head multiple times to slay the thing. 

This story has a happier ending. 

Lyon and the surfer got in contact, Lyon driving a considerable distance – the other party didn’t want to be identified either by name or location – and both agreed it was a matter both forgotten and that each would fix their own boards. 

“I have respect for the guy,” says Lyon. “He didn’t go to the cops, he didn’t bitch out. Not like that guy who made the TikTok. Had this guy not done the stupid fucking TikTok thing, nothing would’ve happened, I would’ve been fine. But it’s this cancel culture pissy little shit that’s going on. Same with the job, they just bent over for these guys.” 

The Agency Malibu wrote on IG, 

The Agency was founded to create a unique group of professionals focused on community and camaraderie within the real estate industry. We endeavor to be pillars in the greater Malibu community and foster and environment that promotes integrity and respect.

Upon learning about the incident involving Andy Lyon on Friday, 8/5, we have decided to part ways with this individual. The Agency emphatically denounces this individual’s behavior, and our hearts go out to those involved in this incident.

Lyon says he was impressed by the surfer involved and says “He wanted it to be handled how it should’ve been, not in this form, the keyboard warriors, judge, jury and hangman. He totally got the whole thing. I met with his Dad. He acknowledged that he back-paddled me. He said he could appreciate how much shit I have to deal with (at Malibu) and said that this was the way it should be fucking handled not in a basement jury with a bunch of Reddit fucks.” 

“You know,” says Lyon, “I fucking fucked up and hit his board but that’s the generation I come from, you fucked my board, I’ll fuck yours. I’ll patch mine, you patch yours.”