Blog #1: From Sharks to Surfing

video of encounter with a great white at bottom

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Growing up in Santa Barbara, surfing is part of the lifestyle. However, some people really struggle getting into the ocean due to the marketing success of the Hollywood hit movie Jaws. While I loved the ocean, thoughts of what lurked below always clouded my mind. Sometimes it takes facing your fear to grow beyond it.

Hollywood's Curated Fear

In 1975 the hit movie Jaws was released, and you can still feel the effects of the terror it curated in the consumer market today through unintended harm through using fear as the emotional connection to the consumer. The medias powerful impact on people's perception of the world has resulted in the misconstruction of sharks as soulless killing machines. Thus the shark finning industry has thrived and millions of sharks are killed a year; disrupting the balance of our oceans ecosystem. While I never watched the movie as a kid, the theme music was no stranger to me. Whether from seeing the music used in a commercial or older adults/kids chasing me around in a pool, through the effectiveness of sensory marketing I knew to associate this music with something bad and scary in the water: a shark.

While Jaws made me scared to swim in the deep end of a pool, the movie Chasing Mavericks had the opposite effect. This feel-good biographical drama was inspired by the surfer Jay Moriarty, who surfed one of the biggest waves in the world at age 16. This movie opened an aspirational group to me. Through a drive to get out in the ocean and conquer my fear I began to follow and get inspiration from surfers like Lakey Peterson, Bethany Hamilton, Kelly Slater, and Conner Coffin. However, that is a lot easier said than done. Already having a family that had a negative ingrained fear of the ocean, It took a while for me to find the courage to paddle out.

“paddle, paddle, paddle, little grom” – Chasing Mavericks

From Movies to Reality

After my freshman year of college, my best friend Francesca and I decided to go on a paddle-boarding excursion on a beach 15 minutes south of town in Carpentaria. Santa Claus beach is a calm and famous spot for its beginner surf camps, an ideal mellow place to paddle-board.

I had not been out in the ocean or even stood up on a paddle-board in about half a year, thanks to Michigan’s weather. After suiting up and grabbing a GoPro to hopefully film some dolphins we headed out. After getting through the whitewash and past the surf break, I shakily stood up and got my bearings. It had not even been 5 minutes when I noticed a dark shadow out of the corner of my eye. Slowly, I turned around out of curiosity and it took me a few seconds to process what I was seeing a few feet from my board.

Tailing my board was a great white shark.

5 min later I was with a Great White 🦈

It was keeping pace with my board in a melodic side to side motion as it glided behind me. Shell shocked I turned to my friend who had not noticed the situation yet, “Dude, there is a great white behind me”. She scoffed and laughed but as soon as her eyes focused on the dark shadow behind me, she froze and whispered, “do not panic”. Those words grounded me and made me flashback to a scene from Chasing Mavericks where Jay was free diving and a great white shark swam over him.

Fear and panic are two separate emotions. Fear is healthy; panic is deadly” – Gerard Butler as Frosty Hesson, Chasing Mavericks

While we were both afraid, adrenaline pumping through our veins, we made a conscious decision to keep on paddling and act as if it was not there. My legs were shaking as Francesca took out the GoPro and started to film, joking that at least there would be a documentary of our deaths. The decision to not let panic control our actions perhaps lead this potentially deadly encounter into a remarkable experience. For about 5 minutes the white shark swam behind me and occasionally came up to the side of Francesca’s board.

It was small for a great white shark, only around 9 feet from our estimations. Even though it was a juvenile white shark, it was still as large as our boards. We called out to the people swimming near us to get out of the water, ensuring some minor panic on the beach. But soon, the white shark’s curiosity seemed to be sated and it lost interest, disappearing back into the depths.

From facing one of my greatest fears I was able to overcome the boundary that was stopping me from surfing before.

Surf's Up

A few days later I went on a trip down to Mexico with my family. We have a residence in the small surf town Troncones, about 30 minutes north of Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa. There, I finally found the drive to rent a surfboard and get out in the waves with my brother. While I got pounded in the break and split my eyebrow open on a bad wipeout, I finally was out there surfing! I was charging 5-6 foot waves when I had only ever dared to surf white wash before.

Over the next few years I avidly began exploring the world of surfing. I went from renting boards to owning boards, from wiping out in the white wash to riding the peak of a wave. I quickly learned to track swell, tides and get the latest surf news through Surfline. Now, after surpassing my fear of the ocean that was curated by the mass media, I am an avid surf fan looking forward to the 2020 Olympics where surfing will be included as a sport for the first time in history.

Word Count: 818

Value Added: photo, personal photo and video, GIF, article link, quotes, website link

References:

• Chasing Mavericks Quotes. (n.d.). Quotes.net. Retrieved October 28, 2019, from https://www.quotes.net/movies/chasing_mavericks_quotes_115944.

• Giphy. (2018, April 23). Dad Jaws GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY. Retrieved October 28, 2019, from https://giphy.com/gifs/jaws-rerelease-happy40thjaws-1leqGeKvSGDMk

• Surfline.com. (n.d.). Retrieved October 28, 2019, from https://www.surfline.com/.

• Babin, B. J., & Harris, E. G. (2016). Cb: consumer behavior. Stamford: Cengage Learning