Wave of Skulls: Irish surfers Fergal Smith and Tom Lowe challenge Tahiti’s Teahupo’o, known locally as the “Wall of Skulls.”

Produced by Allan Wilson

Michael Scott Moore, author of the new Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread From Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, With Some Unexpected Results, talks to The New York Times about the history of surfing, avoiding words like “stoked” and “gnarly” in his manuscript, and planning surfing trips from the capital of Germany:

“From Berlin you have to plan a surf trip like a ski trip. It’s unfortunate and unnatural. I like to surf Portugal and Morocco, when I can, and this winter I’ll have a reading in France. If I lived in California now my writing day might start with a surf session, which would make me less productive.”

“…I’m still trying to figure out why I felt the need to come here. Partly it’s because I want to build something nice, to prove I can—despite a barnful of half-assed projects back home that say I can’t. And I want to find a path into a sport that, up until now, I’ve resisted. More and more, guys I used to ride bikes with are absent, gone surfing. My kids surf. So do my basketball buddies. I live only minutes from a nice little Massachusetts break.”

photo credit: rowland_rick

“Their styles on the water reflect their personalities, with Greg surfing aggressively and competitively, riding deep in the tube and cutting waves to pieces with powerful carves, and Rusty surfing patiently, smoothly flowing between elegant, relaxed turns. Neither brother, though, is about to let the pursuit of a trophy or title get in the way of their good time. ‘Contests are an important part of big-wave surfing,’ Greg says, ‘but the greatest joy for me comes from leaving the first set of footprints on an isolated beach, paddling out into unknown waters, and being the first to ride a wave somewhere.’”

photo credit: Bengt Nyman

Patagonia recently launched a follow up to their first-ever fly fishing “e-catalog” in the surfing vertical: the 2010 spring surf catalog, with archival content and quality design–promising to save 176 trees and eliminate 74,826 gallons of wastewater…

“Figurative in any medium. I’ve always been drawn (pardon the pun) to the human figure and the challenge of capturing personalities since I started doing caricatures in high school. I’ve been very fortunate that my destiny as an artist has always been evident to me.”

“Clay Marzo doesn’t love surfing. Love is a complicated thing—sometimes people fall out of love—but there is nothing complicated about Clay’s relationship to the ocean. For Clay, surfing is an elemental need, a form of sustenance, a way of being that he couldn’t be without. He just turned 20, but he can’t remember a time when he wasn’t obsessed with barrels, shortboards, and the daily swell report.”

Documentary: Clay Marzo: Just Add Water

Produced by Koastal Media

Kustom Air Strike: Surfers Mitch Coleborn, Clay Marzo, Jay Davies, Josh Kerr, and Chippa Wilson boat trip through Indonesia’s Mentawai Islands on a mission to film the winning wave of the 2010 Kustom Air Strike surf competition.

Produced by Kai Neville