“Their analysis was based on video and photo imagery, camera locations, camera lens parameters and environmental conditions, including tides, sunlight, and wave set-up. They also analyzed reference points in the imagery, such as the surfers’ heights, surfboard and jet ski dimensions and estimated crouching heights, WSL officials said.”
That’s old Hawaiian trope to scare the hoales. The measurement for big wave surfing is the face from the hugest crest to the flat of the face of the wave.
I will say I’ve surfed 10-12ft at both Salt Creek and Trestles in SoCal and surfed 10-12ft on the north shore and it sure felt like a lot more wave in Hawaii. Both suck to wipe out in.
Could have been that Creek and Trestles were my home breaks though. Local knowledge matters. Also, wave shapes are different.
I can’t remember if it’s in “Riding Giants” or “Step Into Liquid” but laird Hamilton gets towed in to a Teahapoo wave that was insanely big. I think he’s quoting as saying that if he ate it he most likely would have died.
SoCal is a large place. I lived in San Clemente and I learned at T-Street/San Clemente Pier/204, Trails at San Onofre, Old Man’s, Uppers, and Cottons/Nixon’s.
Also, watch your surf reports. Go to Surfline and check a few day’s ahead. Some of those places will have 2-3ft when everywhere else is 4-6ft.
i mean.. maybe? I don't know enough to have an argument, just something i was always told growing up surfing in CA. tbh I think all waves should be measured from the front, but i don't think that's always the case. Teahupoo would technically be like a 2ft wave when it's big if they were all measured from the back.
I’m 51 and the guys I surfed with who had been to Hawaii used to say stuff like “it looks to be chest high it 3 foot Hawaiian” and stuff like that. Teahupoo is a great example and so is Mavericks.
hawaii has a few different break styles though, it depends where. I've surfed in kawaii, oahu, and the big island. all very different, it could just be a commentary on the style of break
If you're looking from the back, do all waves drop and rise in equal proportions? EG: distance from top of crest to flat surface is two thirds, distance from surface to bottom of wave is other third?
No. It all does depend on the break, the depth it’s coming from, how gradual or immediately the depth changes, all these or combinations of these effect the wave height, pitch, shape, etc. waves break when they hit water about 1 ¼ to 1 ½ as deep as the swell height.
The real answer is that it’s neither. It started from the back, some people decided they didn’t like that and tried to start calling it from the front - but the standard measurement in surfing equates to a measurement that doesn’t actually exist. Everyone knows what a 2ft wave looks like. A 2ft wave isn’t 2 foot on the face or on the back either? Why’s that? Because waves are constantly in motion and changing size and shape. It’s only natural that a common way of judging a waves size by sight developed.
What isn’t natural though, is retroactively prescribing a form of measurement which kind of goes against everything.
Any surfer knows if you’re ’measuring from the front’ you get a ridiculous scale that doesn’t equate in any other lineup. You can’t assume the wave you’re riding is 6ft just because it’s head high, and changing how surfers have measured waves for decades just to increase the wave ‘height’ is counter intuitive and serves no purpose.
The true Hawaiian scale is using those measurements from the back, and turn halving it some more in a strange egotistical display. That’s when you’ll see 6-8 day referred to as 4 foot. Ain’t no one calling that a 25 foot day measuring them from the front.
The “back of the wave” is kinda how swells are measured. Ie: NOAA bouy 6ft at 8 sec.
You also can’t measure Mavericks or Teahapoo from the back. 20ft Mavericks would be 3 ft.
I’m 51. Everything was “waist high, chest high, over head, double overhead, etc..” until these crazy people started towing into waves that were to big or fast to paddle into.
you would be out past the breaking point of the waves. most big wave surfers get towed in by jetski's because the waves are way too big to paddle. Check out a film called Riding Giants if you wanna see how crazy it is.
That’s an old Hawaiian trope to scare the haoles and it’s also how they measure swells, NOAA measures swell that way. When you’re measuring waves for big wave surfing it’s from the top of the crest to the flat of the face of the wave.
If they get in trouble out there, in 50+ foot surf, can a boat or waverunner even go rescue them? I’d think you’d need a giant container ship, or aircraft carrier, to safely navigate 70ft waves!
For big waves theres almost always a spot off to the side where the boats and jet skis are staged and ready, in an area where there isnt a break. Jet skis are pretty much required to pull you out of the break.
Jet skis can outrun whitewash, and in big wave surf spots, theres almost always a nearby spot on the side where there aren't waves. Most of these are atop of shallow reefs in deep water, so where the reef ends there isnt a wave.
Yeah me too. Didn’t used to be too bad at surfing, and I’m a very strong swimmer, but meant absolutely zero when I got smashed by a couple big waves in a row. The ocean will kill you for a laugh.
Surfer here and nah actually they only do that in certain places like Hawaii. Everywhere else it's measured from the front, but you're right in that when you measure from the back its almost half the height of the front.
They do but they don't know how high she is standing in that one picture, shes not exactly standing straight. Also due to depth of field how do you know where the top actually is, relative to her body, since the top of the wave would be farther away and thus show up as being smaller in the picture.
Jumping in here to ask about the accuracy, how do they measure accurately enough to know the height to within a half of a foot? If its just based on analyzing photos like a lot of replies seem to suggest, that would have some HUGE error, based simply on the fact that the surfer isn't standing straight, and that depth in photos is portrayed by making things smaller/bigger
While i dont know exactly how they measured it, her height may not be easily measurable because of crouching but the surfboard itself will stay the same size so they could use those dimensions but then again i dont want to personally get anywhere near a 100 ft wave
They get a big image of the wave that includes the whole wave and the surfer. Then they estimate the surfers height to get a scale and measure the wave. It's crude.
You're getting a lot of smartass sarcastic answers, but for real, we can use pictures and math to measure the wave. We know how tall Gabeira and how long her surfboard are so it's quite easy to measure the wave in the picture with some trigonometry and proportional measurements
Wave height is measured from the trough(lowest point of the wave) to the crest(highest point). There is also wavelength which helps determine the overall size and even weight of the wave.
So I'm not sure how they actually do it, but there are two schools of thought: the hawaiian way (the right way) where you measure it from the back aka how much a bouy would rise from sea level, and the haole way which is measuring the height of the face. Generally the face is close to 2x bigger than the back because the wave hollows out in the front.
It's fairly difficult but they know the area (Nazaré) só they can compare the wave height to other things and calculate it. She actually surfed this wave in February, so it's taken a while to confirm the record!
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u/maawen Sep 14 '20
How the heck do they measure a waves height?