Surfing’s 8 Most Dangerous Waves, Plus Surf Spots for the Rest of Us / National Geographic

For all of human history, waves have been a byword for “danger.” They drown swimmers, sink ships, and swamp entire towns with an inexorability and indifference that mocks the frailty of man in the intermittent roar and murmur of moving water.

Big-wave surfer Mark Healey on a huge wave at Jaws during the October 2012 swell;

Photograph by Zak Noyle/A-Frame

While many old maritime fears have died out in our modern age of monolithic cruise ships, detailed weather algorithms, and satellite navigation, the wave remains uniquely menacing to all but a very select few. Ironically, surfers have changed the way we look at waves, not through any technological advancement, but by dedicated themselves to a Pre-Columbian diversion in which they challenge the sea with little more accouterment than and a glorified buoy with fins on one side.

Big-wave surfing as we know it today is a relatively new pursuit tracing its origins to the “waterman” culture of Hawaii in the Postwar period. The last 20 years have seen nearly constant redefinitions of the size and ferocity of waves that it is possible for a person to ride and for the moment there seem to be few limits to what accomplished surfers will attempt. However, there remain a handful of surf spots in the world that, by dint of size, bathymetry, and/or pure power, have even the boldest of today’s watermen and women contemplating their own mortality as they wait between sets. Read more and video; Surfing’s 8 Most Dangerous Waves, Plus Surf Spots for the Rest of Us