So, while knowing what the swell is like at every spot in the world, 24 hours a day can be extremely useful, it can also be very frustrating. It gives us the possibility of being able to surf better waves, but it also constantly reminds us of how much good surf we are missing.
One thing that has been steadily growing over the last decade and a half is people’s interest in understanding waves. The increased availability of information, mostly thanks to the Internet, has probably helped to spark this interest.
Not so long ago, surf forecasting was still almost like a dark science, best left to a handful of gurus. While these guys became exited about pressure gradients, upper airstreams and explosive cyclogenesis, the rest of us struggled to interpret the isobar charts or we simply sat back in blissful ignorance. In the past, a lot of people would be uninterested or even afraid to ask basic questions like “What is period?” But nowadays, people are becoming aware of more complicated notions like radial dispersion and bathymetric focusing, and people are beginning to analyze the workings of their own local spots.
This extra curiosity and awareness must surely be a positive contribution to our overall surfing experience, because it enhances our enjoyment of the natural environment. By knowing a little more about how it all works, or at least by asking questions or talking about it to our friends, we are adding another dimension to our surfing experience.
The basic mechanisms of wave physics, like refraction, shoaling and dispersion, have always existed as part of Nature, just like the behaviour of fish or the chemical composition of rocks. The only difference is that surfers’ understanding of it has got better over the last decade or so.
But what about new knowledge: knowledge based not on the understanding of Nature but on the understanding of things other humans have invented? I mean things like understanding all the different functions of your new digital camera, or finding out where the euro key has disappeared to on the laptop you just bought.
The fact that we are using more and more of our thinking time to understand things that other people have invented, and less time to understand Nature, is slowly but inexorably distancing us from our surroundings.
How does that affect us as surfers? At the same time as our curiosity of ocean waves sharpens, our need to understand all the latest software and hardware is gradually sequestering our thinking time. Perhaps, one day, we simply won’t have time to think about the wonders of bathymetric focusing and convex refraction because we’ll be bogged down trying to work out how to download or open some software on a new version of some operating system.
So, in summary, has our overall surfing experience improved since I started writing oceanography articles for the Surfer’s Path 17 years ago? Are we all happier now than we were before?
Well, modern wave-forecasting, used in the right way, can save us a lot of time and stress by getting us to the right spot at the right moment. And many of us are now becoming more aware of the natural processes behind surfing waves, which not only enriches our experience by giving us more to talk and think about, but also gives us the edge over our friends and rivals if we know how a certain spot is going to behave in certain conditions.
All in all, it means that we are surfing better waves and having more fun than ever before. Right?
But if we let it, all that information and all that technology can overcomplicate things for us: it can make us more stressed, take us further away from the wonders of Nature, and sometimes actually worsen our overall surfing experience.
So maybe we are not quite barking up the right tree. Surfing is not just about scoring and collecting tube-time as if it were a marketable commodity. It is also about being immersed in nature, being part of a tribe, getting to know yourself and getting to know other cultures. It is about many other things including, of course, experiencing flow, that elusive state of mind usually only attained by children and hunter-gatherers.
Maybe the answer to having a better surfing experience, being a “happier surfer” lies inside of us, something to do with the way we use all that information, combined with the way we use all the memories and experience we have gathered in the years since we first set foot on a surfboard.
To read more from Tony, check out his book, Surf Science, an Introduction to Waves for Surfing.
