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Think of surfing and the obvious names pop up: Hawaii, Jeffery’s Bay and California. And there are plenty of other popular surfing destinations, but sometimes there’s ridiculous surf in other places that don’t register in the collective surfing conscious. As with any form of adventure travel, in the surfing world it pays to get off the beaten track. Check out six surf destinations you’d never think of at gadling.com
Ask any shark freak (like myself) and they’ll tell you there’s a specific pecking order among shark tourism destinations around the world. I mean, you can see reef sharks pretty much anywhere near the equator, but where do you go for the big boys? Cause we all wanna see a great white shark, correct?
That’s a good question. And you’ll get different opinions on the best shark tourism spots around the globe. South Africa’s good. Australia’s interesting. There’s California. And right in the middle of the Pacific, there’s Hawaii.
The fiftieth state has a little of everything when it comes to all things sharky. I was there in January of 2010 and had a short but very enjoyable dive off the North Shore with Hawaii Shark Encounters. At that time of year it’s usually galapagos and sandbar sharks, although tiger sharks appear in the fall.
But the reason for this post, is that something very special happened, on December 18th, 2005. On that day, a great white shark made a very rare appearance, to Jimmy Hall and the crew at Hawaii Shark Encounters. A beautiful, 20 foot female great white dazzled Hall and the gang for 45 minutes. And Hall left the cage and swam with this marvelous creature. Read about the encounter here.
Sadly, the encounter was a swan song for Hall, as he passed away while BASE jumping just two years later. But the legacy of this remarkable interaction lives on. Watch this video and you’ll see what I mean.
Are there great white sharks off Hawaii? On a very, very few special occasions, the answer is yes. But they’re so rare that it’s pretty much assured that you won’t see the great white in Hawaiian waters any time soon.
And by the way, enjoy this video, because to date it’s the only time a great white shark has ever been filmed off Hawaii.
Be at peace, Jimmy Hall.
This is the stuff of urban legends. Mark Foo was a professional surfer, starting out surfing the south shores of Oahu, and later moved on to big wave surfing at Waimea Bay. In the 1970′s, Foo joined the IPS World Surfing Tour and became a fixture on the international surfing scene. His passion for big wave riding got the best of him however, and he quit the professional tour in the 1980′s to pursue his addiction to the big wave.
While his life was full of passion and excitement, his death was something out of a horror movie. I mean straight out of a horror movie. On December 23, 1994, Foo was surfing a set of waves at Mavericks with fellow surfers Brock Little and Mike Parsons. Foo had just dropped onto a large wave, when he wiped out and disappeared from view. Parsons caught the next wave and promptly wiped out. Then he felt something tugging at his leg. Thinking it was Little, and not realizing that Foo had disappeared, he went back out.
Fellow surfers found and retrieved Foo’s body later that afternoon. This video documentary shows the wave and Foo’s wipeout, as well as Little and Parsons coming to shore on the next set of waves, still unaware that Foo was missing. Parsons later told reporters about Little grabbing his leg from below the surface. Nope, it wasn’t Little. Look at the video and you see Little coming up behind Parsons…while Foo is still alive, held below the surface by his leg rope. This video literally shows a man drowning in the background, without you, the viewer, even knowing. How’s that for eerie?? However, the surfing community wisely chooses to remember Foo as a big wave surfer, who lived and died following his passion. And for that, I salute Mark Foo.
Surfing beckons, as in the biggest freakin’ waves you’ve ever seen in your life, on Oahu’s North Shore. A friend of mine, Kane Ryan, was in Hawaii last month at the same time that I was there. The swells coming in at Waimea, Sunset Beach and Banzai Pipeline were absolutely huge. They were so big that state officials closed the beaches, and us wide-eyed tourists had to gawk from shore. Fortunately for us, there were some locals who decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and surfed the biggest waves I’ve ever seen. The guy at my hostel later told me that Pipeline is arguably the most dangerous surfing location on Earth. According to him, you’ve either gotta be suicidal or one of the top five pro surfers in the world. Dude, l was just honoured to be there! Even more amazing is the quality of these pictures. Kane’s got a great eye for the perfect shot, and a ridiculously fast camera.
Kane created The Dirty Wall Project in 2008 to fill immediate, small needs in the countries in which he’s travelled. He raises funds for The Dirty Wall Project through his photography, promotional events and his website. Last year he worked in an orphanage in India and he’s on his way back to India in a few weeks to do more work. It’s not often that you meet a genuine, true human being whose only desire is to help people. Kane is one of those people, and I’m honoured to know him.
One of the coolest things to do in Hawaii is snorkeling in a pristine bay at the southern coast of Oahu, called Hanauma Bay. This is a great way to get away from the tourist masses of Honolulu and Waikiki (that is, if they don’t follow you there, as it can get crowded). Hanauma Bay is about a 20 minute drive south of Waikiki, or a 45 minute bus ride. Before entering the water, several locals told me that one of the highlights of snorkeling here is encountering the turtles in the bay. If you swim around for a while, maybe, just maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll see a turtle, so they say. I’d been in the water for about five minutes and then…this guy came out of nowhere and swam right up to me. Pardon the water mark on the close up picture of the turtle, underwater photography takes time! Anyway, add this to your list of things to do when in Honolulu. Click the turtle link for the Oscar-winning movie of the turtle.Turtle
Just got back from Oahu, where I went shark diving off the north shore. This was a totally different experience than diving off a tuna boat with great whites for five days. The operation was Hawaii Shark Encounters, based in Haleiwa…home of some of the most monster waves on the planet. In fact, I had originally booked my shark dive on Monday, January 11th, but had to postpone it until Friday that week because of a ridiculous swell on the north shore…as in forty foot waves, truly a surfer’s wet dream! But I digress. We went out on the Friday, about three miles off shore to an awaiting cage, where several sandbar and a seven foot galapagos shark awaited us. We were in the cage for about twenty minutes. The sharks were pretty curious about us, swimming up to the cage and circling about two feet from us. In total I’d say about ten sharks showed up. A fun morning for sure. Our divemaster, Cole, says that they regularly see tiger sharks in September and October, and that they’re so common at that time that they pretty much guarantee a sighting. He also said that despite their scary reputation they’re really afraid of humans, and that they’ll immediately swim away if approached by a diver. Considering people kill 100 million sharks annually, compared to fifteen humans killed by sharks each year, I’d have to agree that sharks have a lot more reason to fear us than we do them. If I can accomplish one thing from this blog, I want to clarify that sharks are so important to the survival of our oceans, and that responsible shark tourism brings people together with these amazing creatures.
