Mentawai surfing pioneer Martin Daly reports crocodiles at Macaronis

“Surfing with apex predators is not optimal.”

The name Martin Daly rings a few bells don’t it. You might remember him as the skipper of the Indies Trader, the fifty-year-old former salvage boat Marty used to explore the Mentawai Islands, revealing the remarkable archipelago slowly over a decade. 

First with Rip Curl’s The Search movie series and peaking with Jeff Hornbaker’s No Destination and The Hole at the end of the nineties.

These days he’s master of a Pacific alt-universe specifically Beran Island in the Marshals, a twenty-hour sail from Majuro, the republic’s capital city.

Here Daly built an off-the-grid lodge for sixteen people, powered by wind turbines and solar panels. All of the rubbish the lodge creates is processed and all non-biodegradable refuse is taken back to Majuro’s dump furnaces and its recycling centre. He grows watermelons, papaya, tomatoes, kale, catches a ton of fish and even keeps a few hogs.

It’s where Natural Selection played out, if you’re wondering. 

Anyway, back to the Ments. 

Earlier today, Daly posted footage of a crocodile swimming through the Macaronis lineup. 

Rumours of crocs at one of my most favourite waves that I’ve been surfing for over 40 years are rumours no longer. Big fella has been there for quite a while, saw another only slightly smaller one last year at a nearby break. First we’ve seen here , surfing with apex predators is not optimal , they have left us alone up until now but….. 

 

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Confirmation of the sighting at Macaronis was revealed in the comments and, further afield in the Telos, one surfer told of a croc killing a local woman.