Vitor Oliveira

Duke Kahanamoku is the most influential surfer of all time and is often hailed as the father of modern surfing. There is nearly no one questioning these titles. Recently, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Hawaii unveiled a never-before-seen interview with the legendary surfer and Olympic swimmer. In the 1966 episode of Pau Hana Years, a seminal Hawaii television program that aired on KHET-TV (now PBS Hawaii) for 16 years, running from 1966 until 1982, Bob Barker chats with Duke Kahanamoku, then 76. The conversation drifts from royal ancestry to Olympic lanes, from Hollywood sets to a surfboard shaped by hand, tracing the outline of a life that helped define modern surfing and Hawaii's public image in the 20th century. And if you know little about the man who dreamed of getting surfing into the Olympic Games, this is a precious piece of history. A name with history, worn casually The interview starts with Kahanamoku explaining that "Duke" is not a title but his giv...

In South Africa, apartheid defined public life from 1948 through the early 1990s. The system enforced racial separation at every level. By the 1960s, much of the world had taken a stand against it. The country was expelled from the Olympic Games in 1964, and international sports federations followed with broad boycotts. South African teams were cut off. Foreign athletes were expected to stay away. Surfing did not follow that path. There was no strong international body to enforce a ban, and the sport's loose structure made collective action unlikely. South African contests continued to run, and foreign surfers kept arriving, drawn to the long right-hand walls of Jeffreys Bay and the dependable surf near Durban. For many, apartheid was treated as background noise, something acknowledged but rarely examined. Some surfers went further and defended what they saw. Randy Rarick, visiting South Africa in 1970, offered a blunt assessment after only a short stay. "They'...

An iconic urban surf break in Portugal is reaching one of its final chapters. In March 2019, SurferToday ran a feature on the controversial decision to extend a breakwater in Matosinhos , Portugal, one of Europe's most popular and frequented surf breaks. At the time, the Portuguese government had approved and sponsored a structural change to the southern breakwater of a port near Matosinhos Beach, just a mile from the UNESCO World Heritage city of Porto. The idea of adding a 985-foot (300-meter) stone wall, according to the port authority and the national government in Lisbon, would allow larger container ships to dock at the Port of Leixões, the country's second-largest port. In other words, the port would be able to continue growing and increasing its activity despite being completely surrounded by cities and residential areas. The extension of any breakwater worldwide always carries significant consequences. Just ask the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which is ...

It's one of the few Australian regions where you'll barely find a wave noted on a surf break guide. We chased the answer to an old question: Is it possible to surf the Northern Territory (NT)? If so, where could we find waves? The NT has nearly 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers) of coastline and 1,488 beaches. According to the Surf Life Saving Northern Territory, "more than 200 of these beaches are classified as 'surf beaches.'" However, unlike every other region in Australia, we rarely hear anyone talking or writing about the quality of the waves in "The Top End." Why aren't there any reports of the surf up north? Isn't it closer to Indonesia than to any of the other six federated states? It should get enough swell to light up some of those 200 beaches, right? Well, it's tricky. There are several reasons why NT is not the most inhabited region Downunder. Large and scarcely inhabited The Northern Territory (NT) covers approximately 1...

The image is quite familiar. A lifeguard in red and yellow is scanning the horizon. Everything looks calm from a distance, right? But the job, especially in low-resource regions, is closer to a Wall Street risk management activity than you'd think. We might be exaggerating a bit here, but you get the message. A lifeguard has people's lives under his watch. So, what exactly are the responsibilities of a lifeguard? What makes a surf rescuer a good professional? And what are their red flags and don'ts? The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is one of the most prestigious lifesaving institutions on the planet. It was founded in 1824 in the United Kingdom. RNLI's lifeguard manual makes one thing clear from the start: lifeguarding is not about reacting to emergencies but about preventing them from happening in the first place. We took a thorough read of the document and gathered the dos and don'ts for professional beach lifeguards that could very well appl...

Imagine having a robot shooting your surf in the ocean, instead of having to ask your partner to be there for hours filming the waves you weren't even able to ride and finish off. Surf REC is an automated surf recording station that tracks and follows each and every wave you take off on at your local surf break. The robotic cameras installed just by the beach capture all your ridden waves and send them to your account, so you can watch them on your smartphone, tablet, or computer. From there, you may choose to get your rides analyzed and scrutinized by professional surf coaches from all over the world, so that they can share tips and suggestions on how to improve your surf. Surf REC is a small structure equipped with several cameras and an electronic kiosk facing the lineup. "We developed a robotic camera that automatically ensures the filming operation guided by a bracelet device that the surfer carries on his arm into the water," explains Paulo Alvito, co-founder ...

A short video has stirred a long-running argument in 21st-century surfing. A e-foiler vs. surfer dispute over right of way and priority on a wave generated multiple opposing perspectives and lines of thought. In the incident, an electric hydrofoil rider glides along the shoulder of a wave, well before it breaks. He has been riding for about 30 seconds. As he nears the lineup, a shortboard surfer takes off closer to the peak, where the wave begins to curl. The two approach each other on the same wall of water. They hesitate, neither fully yielding. Both end up in the whitewater. The e-foiler later claimed he had priority because he had been on the wave for more than 30 seconds. That idea, simple on its face, has not been received kindly. What the informal rules actually say Surfing has few (un)written yet informal rules, but one principle is nearly universal. The surfer closest to the peak, the part of the wave that is breaking first, has priority. The guideline is how most surf...

Have you ever wondered why a surfboard fin looks like that? It is a single or a set of fixed blades or keels located under a board, near the tail, often no bigger than a hand. Yet that small surface is where much of the surfboard's behavior takes place. Speed, hold, looseness, and the feeling of control all trace back to how water moves around fins. The physics of surfboard fins falls under hydrodynamics, the study of how fluids behave in motion. So, according to science, they feature a shape designed to turn flowing water into several forces. Let's take a look at what's at stake when fins and water interact. Lift and the feeling of control One of the key variables in hydrodynamic terms involving surfboard fins is lift. When a surfer leans into a turn, the board tilts and the fins meet the water at an angle. The angle is enough to create a pressure difference between the two sides of the fin. Water speeds up on one side and slows on the other. The result is a sidewa...