Florence (pictured) done after three?

Fears mount John John Florence will sit out season after longtime coach Ross Williams announces retirement

"We live in an awesome world and an even better community. That is our surf world."

The 2025 World Surf League Championship Tour is but days away from the opening hooter and while surf fans should be celebrating the return of professional competitive surfing, a bleak pall has taken hold. First, the generational talent Gabriel Medina announced that he would be forced to sit out much, if not all, of the year after suffering an injury to his pectoral muscle.

And as if the loss of the Dark Knight was not enough, a worse fear is materializing.

John John Florence calling it all off.

Worry took hold at the end of the 2024 season, one in which the former prodigy took home his third trophy but was cagey afterward, hinting it might be his last. Those anxieties have only, since, entrenched with various rumors suggesting the preternatural talent was hanging it up culminating, moments ago, with the announcement of Florence’s longtime coach Ross Williams’s retirement.

The Momentum Generation stud took to Instagram in order to declare:

Just wanted to give a shout out to my tour partners last year. Thank you so much for all the memories. @john_john_florence @tatiwest and @bettylou.sakura.johnson , I really appreciate you guys putting trust in me and allowing me to be part of your journey. We’ve had some amazing results Along the way. These last 10 years was an exceptional learning life experience. John, winning his third world title last year was definitely a highlight. But also Tati fighting her way through to finishing third in the world in the finals was epic. Betty Lou you’re at the very beginning of your journey and I’m so happy that I was there along the way through your formable years. You have a big future. And for anyone curious out there, I’m gonna continue my coaching in 2025 and beyond. But 2024 was always gonna be a very big year for me that included traveling to every single event. But it’s not sustainable for me as far as balancing my career with my family life. It’s too much time away from my precious family. So I will continue coaching, but will focus more of my work here out of Hawaii. Surfing is my love. It’s my everything. It’s what makes me wake up in the morning. It’s what intrigues me. I will always revolve my life around surfing and coaching is a big part of that. I have a lot invested into Luke and finn and Tama as well and will continue working with them on their journeys! I’m sure I’ll pick up more surfers along the way. What really intrigues me is the technical aspect of surfing so I will be open to taking on surfers at the highest levels as well as recreational surfers to help them fulfill their goals and being the best surfers they can be. My good friend @gregsworld did an interview with me a couple years back. You can see the geekiness and how psyched I am on surfing and coaching. We live in an awesome world and an even better community. That is our surf world. I feel so Appreciative to be part of it. Also, I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without my lovely wife, Jennifer Williams. She’s my rock, my everything. And I’m excited to be at home with her in 2025!

Florence, it must be assumed, done too.

I’d bet that the former towhead surfs Pipeline then waves goodbye before being party to fellow tour surfer Tyler Wright’s possible execution in Abu Dhabi the following month.

Will the loss of Medina and Florence, in their prime, be enough to dampen your excitement or is the specter of Filipe Toledo chickening out, again, enough to keep you engaged?

David Lee Scales and I discuss during this week’s episode of The Grit! which also just so happens to be chock full of manly talk. Worth a listen unless you are Justin Baldoni.

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Jeff Schmucker, eight, guts a shark in South Australia and, inset, big Great White.
South Australian surfer and fisherman Jeff Schmucker gutting sharks on his daddy's boat, aged eight, and inset, big Great White on his stern.

Surfers told to avoid South Australia’s west coast until “strong shark mitigation in place.”

"From Fowler’s Bay to Port Lincoln it’s the worst place in the world to go surfing. And it’s getting worse.” 

For the past fifteen years the Streaky Bay fisherman and surfer Jeff Schmucker has been trying to get a pretty simple message across – the population of Great Whites on South Australia’s west coast has blown out and there’ll come a point in the real near future when surfing will become unsustainable for anyone who isn’t thrilled with the idea of being disappeared by a Great White. 

Well, that time is now.

After Streaky Bay local Lance Appleby was killed by a Great White shark, the fourth fatal attack on a surfer by a White in South Australia in less than two years, Schmucker told the Australian Associated Press the population of Great White sharks had “exploded” to such an extent surfing there was now a risk no one should take unless you had a jetski patrolling alongside.

What happened?

In 1999, Australia declared the Great White “vulnerable”and made it illegal to hunt or harass the fish

Since then,

RIP surfers Peter Edmonds, Tadashi Nakahara, Rob Pedretti, Mani Hart-Deville, Mark Sanguinetti, Tim Thompson, Nick Slater, Cameron Bayes, Jean Wright, Nick Peterson, Simon Baccanello, Todd Gendle, Khai Cowley, Lance Appleby, Brad Smith, Nick Edwards, Kyle Burden, Ben Linden, Chris Boy, Ben Gerring, Laeticia Brouwer and Andrew Sharpe.

On the day Lance Appleby was killed, Schmucker had posted a warning to surfers on Instagram that the area around Streaky Bay was crawling with aggressive Great Whites.

I got a call from Schmucker yesterday ‘cause he wanted to get it out there that surfing on the South Australian west coast was now “unsustainable. It’s fucking over,” he told me. 

I’d written a similar piece shortly after the attack but Schmucker would be real grateful if I could get it out there that, if you want to surf on South Australia’s west coast, your odds of being killed are going to be dramatically shortened. 

Schmucker knows these waters.

He first started fishing out of Streaky Bay with his Daddy back in the early seventies when he was eight. He knew how to gut a shark by the time he was nine and before he was in double figures he was sitting on the stern of the family trawler pulling in bronze whalers.

Jeff Schmucker, eight years old, guts a shark.
Jeff Schmucker, eight years old, guts a shark.

He adores his coastline, calls it one of the most unique in the world with its six estuaries, dodge tides, shallow water sea grasses, its wild offshore fishing. He says pole-fishing for tuna in the raw as hell Great Australian Bight is “one of the most electrifying methods for excitement and action.” 

Jeff Schmucker surfing in South Australia
Jeff Schmucker giving a big South Oz right-hander hell.

Schmucker says the latest attack has left Streaky Bay even more traumatised than usual. 

“The kids are reeling, there’s all sorts of emotional stuff going on. Everyone’s fucking upset and not sleeping. And fair enough. I didn’t sleep for the first few days. I was waking up in the night with the logistics of it, the reality of it. It’s fucking brutal. The kids who were there are thinking of it. They can see the blood splashing in the water. It’s firmly in their minds.” 

He says every time there’s a new shark attack he gets a text from Jevan Wright’s mum, Katrina. Jevan was seventeen when he was killed by a Great White at Blacks, there on the Eyre Peninsula. 

“I lay awake at night wondering whether his bones are still inside the  shark and where is the shark,” Katrina told the Port Lincoln Times in 2001. “If only we could get that shark and get the body. It sounds gross, but it’s no more  gross than getting than getting a body out of a wrecked car.” 

The day before Jevan was killed, New Zealander Cameron Bayes was dragged off his board and killed by a Great White at Cactus, a couple of hundred k’s away along the same coast.

“And she tells me, ‘Jeff you got do something about it.’ It’s fucked. It’s still raw.” 

Schmucker says, “I don’t want people to be hurt. It’s not the people who are eaten, they’re gone, it’s the impact on the communities in the surfing world. It really hits people hard.” 

Still, surfers continue to roll the dice. A few days ago, surfers were chased out of the water by a Great White at Caves, a surf spot a couple of hundred k’s west of Streaky Bay. 

“These people think they can surf Cactus with twenty people and be safe. They’re fucking dreaming. From Fowler’s Bay to Port Lincoln it’s the worst place in the world to go surfing. And it’s getting worse.” 

Schmucker says he doesn’t want to be the boy that cried wolf, but at the same time he’s a realist. He hears what the government, what surf lifesaving has to say, that it’s all anecdotal, no hard evidence, but he has almost fifty years in the water down there, in the surf and on boats. 

If you didn’t know, all longline and gill net commercial fishermen have had a HD camera on their boats for the last fifteen years.

“And it’s all kept on a hard drive. Fifteen years of data,” says Schmucker. “Every time there’s an interaction with a threatened species you have to put it in the log book. All that data is there and that data will be conclusive in the growth of the (Great White) population, all these Whites from three footers to twenty footers entailed in the fishing gear.” 

He says the roll call of surfers dying is hard to take. 

“I feel a little responsible for surfing in South Australia. If I don’t say what I think, there’s going to be so much tragedy in people’s lives. In the late nineties, we were down to seeing one or two Pointers a year.” 

So, what can you do about it? 

“Two things. Section 79 of the Fisheries Act allows for the destruction of a shark that has killed someone. If it was the same shark, and it’s a possibility, that ate Todd last year and got Lance this year, and they’ve got both boards so they get the DNA, the shark needs to be killed on the same day. You need to kill a rogue shark. Second, look into monitoring all sharks over ten foot. The little ones are eating fish. Tagging is easy. Maneaters come to you. But you gotta burley up. Give us a sea lion, shoot one of em between the eyes or electrocute it, and you’ll have more Pointers than you can point a stick at.” 

“Listen,” says, Schmucker,

“This about saving lives, saving people from lifetime traumatic experiences. You don’t go to a game park and get out of the car and walk around. People put the blinkers on with surfing. I was addicted to surfing like no other cunt on the planet, surfing from when the surf came up to when it went down. But if you’re surfing here on the Eyre Peninsula, be a fucking realist. You shouldn’t be going in the water until there’s some strong mitigation in place.” 

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Surf influencers face destitution after Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban in US

"Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns..."

Surf influencers are waking up to a harsh reality, this morning, and possible financial destitution. In an expected-yet-surprising ruling, the United States Supreme Court has upheld a ban on the popular short-form video sharing service TikTok. “There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the justices wrote in their unanimous opinion on the case, which was delivered Friday morning. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”

ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, will now have to sell the application or shutter it by January 19th.

Surf influencers who enjoy sharing changing tips, little beach dances and product reviews currently bereft, though maybe drawing some hope from incoming president Donald J. Trump who declared, “The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”

But how much do you utilize TikTok in your daily surfing life? Are you a content creator, helping populate the platform with light-hearted fun? A consumer, scrolling through very fine Nic Von Rupp edits? Or a hater, spouting uninformed opinions about Gen-Z and their inability to grow up?

Your favorite anti-depressive surf website apparently has a TikTok that I completely forgot about.

RIP.

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Gay surf champ Tyler Wright reveals shocking violence in the waves, “I’ve been attacked by men, screamed at, hit in the head.”

“The amount of times that happens is alarming.”

The inspirational two-time world surf champ Tyler Wright, who last graced these pages amid fears she will be executed if she competed at the upcoming Abu Dhabi surf event under that country’s strict Islamic penal code, has revealed the shocking violence she must contend with as a woman in the surf.

In a discussion with the University of Technology Sydney on “progress and challenges for women in surfing” and published on YouTube a few days back, Tyler says:

“I have been attacked by men in the water hit in the head, yelled at screamed at. The amount of times that happens is alarming. That’s not normal for a grown man to come and scream in your face.”

In the video, researchers Dr. Ece Kaya (UTS Business School) and Dr. Leila Khanjaninejad (UTS Transdisciplinary School) “examine these gender-based obstacles and propose solutions to create a more equitable environment.”

The chair of the Surf Coast Women’s Boardriders Club Ashika Kanhai, who is a climate lawyer from Fiji and is also featured, says, “There is a kind of underlying view of women assimilating to the preconceived ideas of the right type of board that you should have and the right type of way you should surf.”

Tyler then talks about being a teenager and the “creepiness” of being told sex sells by a thirty-six-year-old man.

Dr Ece Kaya says,

“We would like to see more women in the leadership positions. We would like to see them in the governing bodies, in the judging towers, we’d like them to be coaching more.”

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Kelly Slater (pictured) thinking of baby names.
Kelly Slater (pictured) thinking of baby names.

Surf fans openly worry that Kelly Slater could choose “trending name that glamorizes violence” for five month old son

Wesson, Caliber, Shooter and Trigger.

Five, almost six, months ago, the greatest competitive professional surfer the world has ever seen, Kelly Slater, and his longtime partner, Kalani Miller, welcomed a baby boy. While undoubtedly a joyous occasion, one usually followed with social media posts announcing the miracle, Slater chose a different route. Appearing on the popular Barton Lynch podcast, the 11-time world champion shared, “We got a little boy and my friends think we’re playing a game with him, because we haven’t said the name. Because we actually, we don’t actually don’t call him anything. We gave him a name for his birth certificate, but, as of now, we don’t have a name to call him. So, we’re kind of just, like, letting him figure out what his personality is.”

He then went on to say it took three months to name their dog and will likely take a year to name the fella.

Lynch, trying to be helpful, exclaimed, “When the name pops it pops.”

And it is precisely that which is worrying surf fans, this morning.

A name that pops.

The Huffington Post, a sort of The Inertia for land-based weaklings, just published a story on the “trending baby names that glamorize violence.” Sophie Kihm, the editor-in-chief at the website Nameberry, told the outlet, “There is a small but noticeable trend of parents using weapons-inspired ― and, more broadly, aggressive ― names for their sons. Many of these names first appeared on the baby name charts in the 2000s, including Wesson, Caliber, Shooter and Trigger.”

Remington, Colt, Ruger, Winchester, Arson, Cutter and Dagger are also seeing spikes in popularity, according to the Social Security Administration.

“Most of these names peaked in use relatively recently — Wesson in 2021 when it was used 306 times, Caliber in 2018 with 24 uses, Mace in 2022 with 64 uses, Dagger in 2022 with 13 uses,” Kihm continued. “It’s hard to say if these names have truly peaked in use or if some will go on to greater use, but I don’t think we’re past this trend yet!”

She concluded, “There’s a certain set of parents that believe weapons-inspired names have a renegade spirit, which has been a rising theme among today’s trendy baby names. Maverick ranks higher than ever, and cowboy-style names like Dutton, Stetson and Boone are climbing the charts.”

And we are definitely not past the trend if Kelly lands on Machine Gun Slater for his charge.

Light a candle please.

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