On July 24, off the coast of Indonesia, onlookers cheered as a boat rode (and eventually capsized to) some crazy waves. (It's ok to hit 'play,' the boat was unmanned.)

Ryan “Chachi” Craig of Surfer.com reports:

It was absolutely crazy. I was swimming and shooting photos and the currents were heavy so I only saw it from the back and saw it drifting into the lineup. There’s so much water moving today–there are palm trees and tree stumps in the lineup. I swam by numerous pieces of wood with nails sticking out of them. The water is like black out there.

Anyways, the swell is really, really big and that boat is anchored in the same spot every day so I assumed it’s always there, anchored in deep water in the keyhole where everyone jumps in. Not sure whose boat it is, but it was even there during the last swell, which was much smaller than today.

This morning when we woke up, a lot of people were tripping out that they (whoever owns the boat) didn’t move it because the swell is supposed to grow. I’ve actually been using it as a marker for where I was in the lineup. It was that close to the wave. Eventually, around mid-morning, it lost its anchor or whatever and started drifting into the lineup. Everyone started paddling away with some determination to get anywhere they could other than where the impact zone was, because if a bigger set came and everyone got caught inside there would’ve been a really bad situation.

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Rachael Talibart's breathtaking "Sirens" photo series pareidolically reveals the fantastic mythical beasts hidden in the ocean waves. From Tailbart's gallery page at the Sony World Photography Awards in which she was shortlisted:

‘Sirens’ is an ongoing portfolio of storm waves captured on the UK’s south coast. A childhood afloat and a love of maritime mythology have come together in these portraits of monstrous waves named after mythological creatures. These images are from 2017 and were captured at Newhaven, in East Sussex, but the photographs are intended to transcend time and place. Thus, in naming them, I have shamelessly plundered myths and legends from all cultures and eras. On the days I make these photographs, the sea is beautiful but also terrifying. I feel utterly insignificant, yet completely enriched by these encounters with wildness, and that is what I have tried to communicate in the photographs.

Above, "Loki." Below, "Poseidon Rising" and "Nanook."

See more: Rachael Talibart "Sirens"

(via PetaPixel)

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Water & Light contains astonishing images of waves. Last year, Armand Dijcks turned some of Ray Collins' shots into cinemagraphs. The two collaborated again in Elemental, a languid meditation on the power and beauty of water. Read the rest

Andrew Hill was stand-up paddleboarding off Gracetown, Western Australia when a pod of dolphins interrupted his fun.

“Eight or nine of them decided to catch that wave and surf straight at me, which has happened lots of times in the past to me and generally they just take off to one side left or right,” Hill told PerthNow. “It's good to see dolphins. Surfers like seeing dolphins, but obviously I'd prefer them to stay a little bit further away than they did yesterday.”

I'm sure they'd prefer the same of Mr. Hill.

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Brazilian surfer Rodrigo Koxa set a new Guinness World Record for riding the biggest wave ever surfed, an 80-footer in Nazaré, Portugal.

“I try to surf big waves all my life, and I had a huge experience in 2014 where I almost died at Nazaré,” Koxa said. “Four months later, I had bad dreams, I didn’t travel, I got scared, and my wife helped me psychologically. Now, I’m just so happy, and this is the best day of my life."

Now he and Mick are planning to wing on over to London and jam with the Stones.

(Sports Illustrated)

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For more than fifty years, scientists have known that the Earth hums. We can't hear the sound as it's at a frequency 10,000 times lower than our hearing threshold but new research suggests that it's coming from the ocean floor. Scientists from the Paris Institute of Global Physics analyzed data from earthquake sensors on the Indian Ocean floor and found the familiar and constant oscillations of between 2.9 and 4.5 millihertz. From National Geographic:

"To better understand where the signal comes from, we believe that observing oscillations from the ocean bottom can help," says co-author Martha Deen...

Since early observations, a number of studies have hypothesized that the Earth's free oscillations are a side-effect of the pounding of ocean waves. Other research suggests the hum could originate from atmospheric turbulence, or the wind motions around the globe, cued by storms. The current study says turbulence could account for part of the vibration, leading the rest to be fueled by ocean waves...

By studying the Earth's hum signal from ocean-bottom stations, scientists can map out a detailed landscape of the Earth's interior. Currently, they can only look at the inside of the planet during earthquakes, which limits studies to certain times and areas. And when looking at seismic activity from land monitors, researchers can't chart places far removed from islands and land masses. But the hum signal, droning and constant, can be detected across the world.

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Jack Baker was bodyboarding at Sydney Australia's Cape Solander when a big backwash wave launched him into the sky. Fortunately, he suffered only from a burst lung and is now recovering.

"I even said to the photographer who was in the water: 'this backwash is going to kill someone.' As this wave came towards me, I took off and as I got in it was real deep, I was already going too fast, I attempted to eject hoping it would send me back through the wave," he told SurferToday.

"Instead of ejecting, I got smashed by the wave, and suddenly I was in the air just falling. I had already got kicked about so hard in the waves so as I came back down I was dizzy and I didn’t know whether I was in the water or up in the air. But when I hit the water that woke me up."

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Photographer Alessandro Puccinelli is mesmerized by powerful waves. His photo series Intersections captures the fleeting moment when the ocean and the clouds appear to become one. Read the rest

Cinemagraphs turn still photographs into moving images. Armand Dijcks has taken the gorgeous wave photography of Ray Collins (previously) and turned them into hypnotic slow-mo animations. Read the rest

Last week, professional surfer Tom Dosland fell 40-feet down the front of a wave at Jaws, Maui's legendary surfing break. See the intensity of it all in the video above. Surfer magazine interviewed Dosland about the day:

Before this wave, I had paddled for a few and pulled back because it wasn’t quite lining up right. But when this wave came toward me, I was totally committed. It looked like a sea monster rising out of the ocean when it came my way. But I was going. No matter what. So I flipped around and started paddling to get into it. You can’t really tell from the video, but there was some wind blowing spray up the face as I was about to drop in, which pretty much blinded me for a few seconds. I could only see out of one eye, and only partially. So I was pretty much just going off of feeling for that brief second before you drop in. Then, I was able to open up both my eyes, and I realized what was about to happen.

That’s crazy you couldn’t see. Can you walk me through what happened next?

Once I started to drop in and could open both my eyes, I instantly realized that this wasn’t going to end well for me. So I sort of hit the eject button hoping to make the best of it and penetrate. I was free-falling for a while. It felt like I jumped off a cliff. That’s when my leash stretched out all the way and flipped me over head-first.

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