Ever bigger swells are focusing attention on how to measure them
In December, Alessandro Slebir surfed a wave at Mavericks beach, California, which some experts say may have been as much as 108 feet tall.
So what? If it was, the 24 year-old construction worker will have surfed the equivalent of a 10-storey building and set a new world record. He’ll also have launched a new era in big wave surfing.
The age of the 100ft wave. It’s creeping closer. The milestone caught the imagination of the public and the surf community in the early 2000s when a competition sponsored by the Billabong brand offered $100,000 to the first person to ride a 100ft wave successfully. The goal was branded absurd and impossible, but 25 years later the hunt’s still on even if the prize is long forgotten.
When, not if. The signs are that rising sea surface temperatures mean more energy in the atmosphere, more powerful storms and bigger waves.
But how do you measure a wave? Not easily. There’s no agreed official method and, given waves both move and disappear, the process relies heavily on video and photo evidence. There are regional disagreements about where the “bottom” of a wave begins and some surfers say the records are so unreliable they should all be eliminated.
Surfing’s conclave. The responsibility falls on Bill Sharp, founder of the Big Wave Challenge Awards. Each September he gathers a panel of experts who vote in rounds to judge contending waves. He compares the process to a papal conclave and says it relies on “photogrammetry” – taking the height of the surfer and multiplying it to infer the height of the wave. The whole thing, he admits, is “less space age and more Pythagorean”.
Going it alone. Some big wave surfers are no longer happy leaving their achievements up to chance videos and voting rounds. Last year Steudner, the current title holder, claimed to have ridden a 93.73ft wave measured using a drone developed with his sponsor, Porsche. “From what I understand, it didn't hold [up to] scrutiny,” Sharp says. Still, a lot of people in the surfing world have accepted it as the new record.
Eyebrows raised. Sharp is confident Slebir’s wave is a record-contender even if others are less than convinced by the 108-foot figure. Slebir isn’t bothered either way. “If it’s a world record, great, pat on the back. It’ll get beaten again.”
He has a point.
Big waves getting bigger. The boundaries of big wave surfing are being pushed at an astonishing speed, partly because technology is improving access to bigger waves and athletes are committed to pushing their limits. But there’s evidence the waves themselves are getting bigger.
According to two recent studies:
- the power of waves, a measurement that reflects both height and wavelength, has risen by about 0.4 per cent each year since records began in 1948 – a small but notably steady increase; and
- extreme wave events have doubled in number over the past 90 or so years.
“It would be consistent with global warming,” says Gary Giggs, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California Santa Cruz. “ More heating of the ocean, more evaporation, atmospheric pressure differences, and stronger winds would generate larger waves.”
What’s more. That means big wave surfing could be one of the few extreme sports whose frontier keeps expanding. Mountains can’t get bigger. The waves might.
Listen to the podcast: The hunt for the 100ft wave
