Vitor Oliveira

Drowning rarely dominates the news cycle, yet the data paints a clear and urgent picture. As shocking as it might sound, in the United States, it remains one of the most consistent and preventable causes of death, especially among children. But let's put official numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on paper. Each year, there are about 4,000 fatal unintentional drownings, an average of 11 deaths per day. At the same time, another 8,000 nonfatal drownings occur, or about 22 per day. And we're not talking about minor incidents. Nearly 40 percent of drowning cases treated in emergency departments require hospitalization, transfer, or further care, compared to 10 percent for all unintentional injuries. For every child who dies from drowning, another 7 to 8 children receive emergency care after surviving a similar event. Overall, estimates also show around 4,000 total drowning deaths annually, including about 900 children and adolescents ag...

How many times have you forced yourself into a wetsuit when everything you see is not worth the effort? It's counterproductive, but in the end, it's almost always worth it. Sometimes, we just have to go. There is nothing less exciting than watching a windblown sea with barely rideable waves and knowing that you can't postpone it anymore. It happened to me yesterday. I hadn't been in the water for weeks. Back-to-back storms made winter what it is really supposed to be, that is, the harshest season to surf the European Atlantic coastlines. I am used to paddling out in 12 °C (53 °F) water and air temperatures below 10 °C (50 °F), but you can't just put your feet in the water when all you can see is white water. It's just undoable from a surfing perspective. So, apart from mind surfing and revising your thoughts on the advantages of having a wave pool at your doorstep - maybe they could be useful and fun after all - there's little you can do to beat a No...

Along the southeastern edge of Iran, where the land thins toward Pakistan and the Arabian Sea begins to breathe, a small village has quietly become the country's surf capital. Ramin sits in Sistan and Baluchestan Province, near Chabahar, on the Gulf of Oman just outside the Strait of Hormuz. It is better known for maps of shipping routes and regional tensions than for surf forecasts, that's for sure. Yet over the past decades, waves have rewritten Ramin's identity. After all, they have been there forever, right? A bit like the Persian culture was one of the cradles of civilization. The coastline here faces directly into the Arabian Sea, leaving it open to long-period swells that travel northward, especially during the summer monsoon. That exposure, combined with a simple sandy shoreline, has turned Ramin into the unlikely center of surfing in Iran. A remote coastline with open water energy Ramin's geography is quite unique and explains everything. The Makran c...

Some living surfers are still from the time when there were no cameras shooting wave-riding. Imagine a world where there was no one capturing the timeless beauty of a well-ridden wave. Hardly believable, right? No surf photographers, no mainstream interest in the sport of kings. Nothing. Just humans elegantly dancing on unbroken ripples and magically walking on water. Everything was "in the moment." No gadgets to encapsulate the present so that, in the future, we could relive the past. And then, there was an opportunity for a periodical surf-related publication, which featured black and white images of people - like yourself - doing the things you loved. Slowly, the first book about surfing gave way to one, two, three magazines. And colored pictures made the dream as blue as the most perfect waves a surfer could be blessed with. Surfers realized they could pause their best moments. And then giant waterproof cameras got closer to the action. TV, movies, and surf cam...

Surfing involves more decision-making than one would imagine. Actually, dilemmas start way before you face that critical moment when you will have to paddle for or wait for the next wave(s). There is an interesting, unconfirmed fact/theory online that says an association football player makes between 3,000 and 6,000 decisions during a 90-minute match. The math behind it is quite simple: assuming the player makes a decision every two seconds, which is reasonable, they will reach 2,700 decisions at the end of the game. It compares to the average 1,000-3,000 decisions an adult makes daily at work. Interesting, isn't it? Association football players are constantly moving up and down the pitch, correcting their positioning, and supporting the creation of playable, attacking and defensive lines across the field. In other words, it's not just about passing and scoring goals. There's way more to football than that. Players are constantly making decisions and moving. In a way,...

Dopamine, crowded lineups, and the strange economics of surf travel, surf usually begins long before you actually enter the water. An early alarm. A quick check of the forecast. Another one, just in case the models have changed overnight. Coffee, a board in the car, and that small irrational hope every surfer knows: maybe today the ocean will cooperate. A few days ago, I drove for hours toward a spot in southern Sicily. When I arrived, the sea had decided - rarely but generously - to play along. A long, fast left was wrapping across the reef. Clean face, light wind, crystal water. The kind of wave that keeps running just long enough for you to think, briefly, that time might be slowing down. Waves like that don't show up often. Maybe two or three times a year, and even when the swell, wind, and tide look identical on paper, the ocean never produces replicas. Theory vs. practice Every wave is a one-time equation of variables that will never align in exactly the same way aga...

When the episode "Surf's Up! Joker's Under!" aired on November 16, 1967, the producers of the hit TV show Batman had a new idea for their caped hero. Batman would not just fight crime. He would also surf. The result was one of the most bizarre chapters in the show's history and, most probably, in Hollywood's attempts to portray surfing correctly. The episode features the Joker stealing surfing talent with a machine, a beach packed with slang-spouting teens, and a final surf contest between Batman and the Clown Prince of Crime. The surfing scenes are stitched together with rear projection and stock footage, including clips from the quintessential surf movie " The Endless Summer ." More than half a century later, the episode has become legendary among fans of the show and surf culture alike. It stands as a colorful example of how mainstream television tried to ride the wave of surfing's popularity during the late 1960s. Surf culture hits pr...

Surf culture is a colorful universe of unique words, terms, and expressions, and few capture the joy and thrilling experience of riding a wave quite like "cowabunga." The shout - it should include an exclamation mark (!) - sounds playful, loud, and slightly ridiculous. But that may be the reason why it stuck. Today, the word is tied to the moment we're dropping into a wave. Interestingly, its story begins far from the beach, in a television studio during the early days of American kids' programming. What followed was a strange cultural ride through comics, surf movies, war zones, and Saturday-morning cartoons. A nonsense word on early television The earliest known use of "cowabunga" dates to the American children's TV program "The Howdy Doody Show," which aired from 1947 to 1956, when shortboards were still a mirage. The show's head writer, Edward Kean, created the word around 1949 while developing dialogue for a comic character na...

Reno Abellira, the stylish Hawaiian surfer whose speed and elegance helped define modern shortboard surfing in the late 1960s and 1970s, has died at the age of 76. The Honolulu native was widely admired for his smooth yet aggressive approach in powerful waves and for shaping surfboards that helped influence an entire generation of surfers. For many in the surf world, Abellira was both a trailblazer and a mystery. He combined world-class performances in heavy waves with a quiet, private personality that set him apart during one of surfing's most colorful decades. Early life in Honolulu Reno Abellira was born in 1950 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father was a middleweight boxer who was later shot and killed in a downtown Honolulu pool room where he was employed by a faction of Korean gamblers as a strong arm. He was shot in the back with no witnesses to identify the shooter, a tragedy that marked Abellira's early years. Reno began surfing at two and a half years old, when his...

Surf parks are popping up around the world, each promising the same thing: perfect waves on demand. In Russia, a company called Vertigo Sports is building its own version of that dream. The system is designed to create ocean-style waves using a compact setup that focuses on energy efficiency and fast installation. The triangular, cheese slice-like concept is already running in two locations. But how exactly does Vertigo Sports' wave pool work? A wave built inside a frame pool At the center of the system is a large artificial lagoon built from modular components. According to Vertigo Sports director Alexander Ishchenko, the surf facility is made up of four main parts. "The construction of our wave consists of a pool, wave generator, pumping station, and filtration station," he explains. The pool itself is essentially a large frame structure built with rigid plastic panels supported by columns. Inside the basin, a waterproof geomembrane keeps water from leaking wh...

Stephanie Gilmore is one of eight personalities honored with a special Barbie doll that celebrates International Women's Day. The eight-time World Surf League (WSL) champion is part of Mattel's Barbie Dream Team for 2026. All female names have excelled in their fields and pushed the boundaries of women's talent to unprecedented heights across sports, art, and science. The lineup also features tennis player Serena Williams, astronaut Kellie Gerardi, race driver Regina Sirvent Alvarado, footballer Chloe Kelly, pop artist Helene Fischer, climber Zoja Skubis, and cricketer Smriti Mandhana. "Inspiring young women to get into sport has been a big part of my role as a world champion, and it truly feels as rewarding as any of my trophies," noted Stephanie Gilmore. "So cool to be immortalised as my very own Barbie, celebrating women around the world who are helping pave the way for the next generation to chase their dreams." The Australian is not the firs...

Tides are the regular rise and fall of the sea's surface that we see along coastlines or when checking the surf for a few hours. Every day, most places on Earth experience two high tides and two low tides in a roughly 24-hour and 50-minute cycle. The phenomenon happens because the Moon's gravity pulls on Earth's oceans as Earth rotates. The Sun's gravity also plays a part, despite a slightly weaker one. That extra 50 minutes comes from the time it takes the Moon to move a little farther along in its orbit around Earth. Spring tides: when the ocean swings wide A spring tide happens when the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun line up in a straight imaginary line. The alignment takes place during the New Moon and the Full Moon phases. At those times, the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun work together, and their combined force stretches the ocean's tidal bulges to their largest size. The result is the greatest difference between high tide and low tide. The...

It's one of the most common dilemmas within the surfing community. Is the surfboard I am holding laminated with epoxy or polyester? Here's how to tell. Let's start by keeping it in simple terms. So, short answer first. Epoxy resin is normally used to glass surfboards built on expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam cores. On the other hand, polyester resin is normally used to laminate boards built on polyurethane (PU) foam. EPS and PU are the most widely adopted surfboard foam cores . Epoxy and polyester are the outer shells. Despite some outer resemblances, the two paradigms look and behave differently. Time to read the signs below and learned how to identify most boards on sight and by touch. It's actually easier than you might think. What epoxy and polyester are, in plain words First things first. What exactly are these two fundamental resins used by surfboard shapers? Epoxy and polyester are two types of liquid plastic used to seal fiberglass cloth to a foam blan...