In Africa for the Tour, Matt Wilkinson and Owen Wright head deep south and rubber up against all things Dark Continent.
Words as told By Wilko to Dave Sparkes, Photos by Corey Wilson and Stu Gibson.
“We’d been in J-Bay and since we were both out of the running for the WSL event we thought, well sweet; we’re in a good part of the world for wearing wetsuits and finding some space to ourselves so we thought: Let’s go searching.”
Full story in Carve 168 on sale for Easter.
Filmed and edit by Nick Pollet
Additional filming by Andrew Buckley, Paul Daniels and Dylan Jeffery
Drone footage by Stu Gibson
Artist: Lionfish Music
Track: African
Source: Getty Images
Filmed for the upcoming TV documentary Britains Sharks the video shows up to 200 blue sharks tucking into a dead humpback whale in an area called The Celtic Deeps between Cornwall, Wales and Ireland.
Dr Nicholas Higgs, a research fellow at Plymouth University’s Marine Institute, set up the experiment with Ben Fogle during the filming in the Celtic Deeps, a deep water trench between the coasts of Cornwall, Wales and Ireland.
Dr Higgs said: “When a whale dies it can float for weeks, and be carried along by the current for miles while being fed on by scavengers. Elsewhere in the world, we know that a huge range of animals will come in to feed, everything from great white sharks to tiny worms. But we’ve never had the opportunity to study one in the UK because when a whale washes up, it is taken to landfill.
“We had no idea what might come along to the feast. I would never have predicted that you’d have this many sharks eating this much of the whale at the surface,” he said.
“If you’d asked me six months ago about what was likely to happen to this whale, I would have said that you might get ‘a few nibbles here and there’, but most of that whale would end up on the seabed. What we’re seeing here is a huge proportion of it just being eaten and taken away by these sharks.
Britain’s Sharks is broadcast on ITV Friday, March 25, at 9pm.
Sharks spotted off the UK and Ireland include mako’s porbeagles, blues and baskers. Although the water is perfect for great whites there have been no corroborated sightings even tough scientists have been trying to find them for years and conditions are ideal.
Carve’s oceanography department however issue a warning for weavers which are about to come back to haunt the beaches.
They came from every corner of the globe. Boardriders united by the mountain and the wave. Traveling from Australia, America, Indonesia, New Zealand, Mexico, Hawaii, France, Morocco, Tahiti and Spain. 16 frothed-out international grommets here to share the line up with their heros. The future of Championship Tour surfing; Mikey Wright, Zeke Lau and Leo Fioravanti. Current World Title runners; Jeremy Flores, Matt Banting, Wiggolly Dantas and Kanoa Igarashi. The legends of the sport; Matt Hoy and Mark Richards, here to make sure surfing still has rock & roll. Power surfers, big wave surfers, and skaters who are now committed surfers… all on Gold Coast shores.
They came to get stoked and feel the high. The same high we all get from the ocean. The one we get from the cheer of the crowd or the hoot of a friend down the line, just as we drop in. And although the salt has washed off, the scaffolding has been pulled down, and the crowds are returning to normal, the buzz is still here…they were some Radical Times.
You’ll know the Maldives are a dreamy place … in the ocean at least.
Sure the politics on land have a history of not being too hot and we’ve lost track of what’s happening with Sultans/Honkys island being developed or not and currently local surfers are fighting a loosing battle against a plan for a bridge from the airport islet to the main island of Male that will trash a spot.
Away from idiotic human behaviour the waves in the Maldives keep rolling and this what Micah Lester, who spends the summer season guiding out there, lucked in to last year. Perfect surf, flawless tubes and back flipping manta rays!
Dean Vandewalle, 14, is a Belgian Born, Costa Rican bred kid who needs glasses to see while surfing. He has homemade prescription glasses that he has to wear which makes it even more nuts how good he is… No need for 20:20 to see how good that little right is though … Hello!
