THE MEN IN GREY SUITS

Strange times on the world tour this year. If John John currently languishing at 26th on the ratings isn’t weird enough the West Oz event was cancelled outright due to shark concerns.
Yep. You read that right.
Now it’s easy to forget about the WSL pro sports tour sometimes. The Australian events rarely set the pulse racing, Brazil is a yawn. It’s only when the tour hits J-Bay, that is handily in our time zone, that we can dodge doing anything productive at work by streaming the webcast on all day. This year we’ve got the bonus of Keramas back on tour, but wind wise it’s the wrong season, it doesn’t work for that much of the tide and word on the ground is the building of hotels has disrupted the sand flow from the stream which builds up in the lee of the reef.
Tahiti, of course, can be epic, but it’s been a long time between drinks for the sickest wave on tour delivering sphincter-clenching, brownshort-making, borderline tow size death boxes. No Cloudie this year either.
The high performance playground of Trestles has been replaced by Slater’s Water Feature in the farmlands of Central Cali.
So it leaves Europe and Pipe to bring the drama, for the last time in the current window. Yes. Again. You read that right. Portugal and France are reportedly being moved to spring (could be epic, could be awful, will be cold) in the 2019 rejig of the tour and as you’ll have read, a lot, online the Pipe event is in the wind due to permit problems that are yet to be resolved.
So in an era of big change, the rise of wave pools as serious venues, big question marks over the tour’s financial viability and a trimming of the tour back to a Mentawai play off style finish in September it’s pretty poor timing for the apex predators of the brine to throw their toys out of the pram.
If we’ve learned anything from recent weeks is everyone has an opinion. And we all know what opinions are like…
We’ve also learned not to bury whale carcasses on beaches, unless you want to encourage a massive shark all-you-can-eat buffet queue.
Sometimes don’t you just celebrate living in boring old Britain and Ireland? The biggest thing we have to worry about in the sea is bumping into a turd or a plastic bag not a prehistoric killing machine.

This is the quote from the WSL’s British boss, Soph, regarding Bitey McBitefacegate:
"The WSL puts the highest premium on safety. This cannot be just talk, and it cannot be compromised. Surfing is a sport that carries various forms of risk, and is unique in that wild animals inhabit our performance environment. Sharks are an occasional reality of WSL competitions, and of surfing in general. Everyone associated with our sport knows that. There have been incidents in the past - and it's possible that there will be incidents in the future - which did not (and will not) result in the cancellation of an event. However, current circumstances are very unusual and troubling, and we have decided that the elevated risk during this season's Margaret River Pro has crossed the threshold for what is acceptable."
Sophie Goldschmidt, WSL CEO

This is, of course, from Jaws:
“I think I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this problem until it swims up and bites you in the ass.”

Sharpy
Editor

POLAR HEATWAVE

This morning I nearly tripped over the snowboard our neighbours have left in the hall. Nothing odd about that if you live in Chamonix.
But I donít. I live in Newquay.
For one weird night at the peak of the #BeastfromtheEast event it snowed enough in Cornwall for the all the ex-seasonaires to relive their youth carving a bit of fresh pow on the golf course. The Red Lion pub made for an ideal aprés venue and for one night only skis, snowboards, sledges and surfboards were littered around the place.
It was a joy. Fun was the order of the day. Folks were sledging down streets in Falmouth. Sure the snow was a pain in the derriere for a lot of folks, but if you got the chance to enjoy it, rather than be frustrated by it, it tapped into the thing we all get from surfing: the thrill of the slide.
Surfing is fun. If the insane act of riding a wave on a plank doesn’t put a smile on your dial then you’re doing it wrong.
Much as the snow day was a blast it owed its origins to something a bit more concerning. In basic terms the polar air couldn’t be arsed to stay at the North Pole and decided to come on a weekender to the shock of us Northern European folks.
The Arctic has been so warm scientists are calling it a heatwave; which considering it doesn’t even get any sunshine until March is pretty nuts. Overall it’s been 20C higher than the average for the last 50 years. Siberia has been 35C above historical averages. Which isn’t good. As thawing tundra releases methane, which is a greenhouse gas, and that could kick off a feedback loop. The sea ice as well has been at a record low extent since satellite observations began. The polar vortex, a high level wind, normally keeps the cold polar air in check but thanks to some sudden stratospheric warming it all went arse about face and the normal westerly jet stream got a massive kink in it sending all the polar fun right into our grills.
The science boffins are concerned. An unstable, warming Arctic in our ever changing world is not a good thing. Sure the melting sea ice doesn’t affect sea levels. But if the Greenland ice sheet does then we’ll be surfing in our beach carparks instead of the beaches and kind of pissed that we didn’t give an arse about being good citizens of the planet and doing everything we can to stop the joint warming up…

Sharpy
Editor