White Horses

I finished at uni with a marine biology degree with Honours and started working for the Office of the Supervising Scientist at the NSW State Fisheries, doing an environmental impact survey on the effects of the Ranger uranium mine in the Alligator Ri

These photos were all taken at Red Bluff. I was there with my family on a bit of a holiday when this huge bait ball came into the bay, followed by masses of sharks. They were everywhere - in the shorebreak, riding the waves, even swimming under some

The ol’ Norse Vikings called it m?rueldr or ‘sea fire’. Jules Verne wrote of ‘a sea of milk’, and if you venture to the Shetland Islands, you will still hear talk of mareel, the phenomenon that sets vast swaths of the ocean aglow at night. Scientists

Monte is my dog, although I’m sure my dad thinks otherwise. He does do a really good job of being Monte’s grandfather, especially while I’m away for the majority of the year travelling and competing. There were three pups left in the litter but I cho

I first came to India in 2005. I was doing my masters degree in social work and I was looking for a place to do my internship with an NGO. That’s how I came across the Sebastian Indian Social Project or SISP, a school that works with the poorest of t

The system was looking really good for Dungeons. A long period west swell, with the core of the storm staying far south below South Africa meant there would be very little weather coming with the waves. This had become the typical winter pattern for

We’d taken refuge in the harbour. Westerly gales and westerly swell roared east across the Pentland Firth, the notoriously dangerous stretch of water situated just north of Scotland. Even the tide was emptying from Northern Atlantic to North Sea – ev

These boards are part of my DNA as both a surfer and a shaper. As a young elite surfer, I cut my teeth on Al Byrne’s six-channel bottoms. As a novice surfboard craftsman, I slaved away under AB’s strict supervision sanding them before I was even allo

Nathan “Hog” Hedge contacted me about some boards to re-qualify on the WQS as he was having a stab at it, but was lacking confidence with equipment for small waves (his big wave act was second to none, so no worries there). We worked and surfed toget

This was Andy Irons’ personal board, it was one of three 6’6”s we made when he won his second world title. He was trailing 500 points behind Kelly coming into Hawaii after Brazil. The way the points worked back then, 500 points was basically insurmou

[CAPTIONS SUPPLIED BY THE PHOTOGRAPHER] Surf photography was always secondary to filmmaking for me, but I’ve been fortunate to travel, film and shoot surfing over the years. Almost all the surf pics in this feature were taken at the start of the ’80s

I had been running a carpet business for 30 years, making customised carpets for renowned artists. Although my carpets were artworks themselves, it was everybody else’s art too. But I couldn’t complain, I was making a good living. Then the recession

Talk about slow on the uptake. It took 450 million years for sharks to finally start surfing. Sure, they’d been mildly interested in watching the dolphins at play for eons, but it wasn’t until this century’s second decade, with their ocean turning in

They’ve dropped the clients off in Singapore after a three week diving charter in Sulawesi. Thomas the captain doesn’t want to sail the strait at night, considering the mayhem and chaos a small boat amongst cargo liners in the dark would entail, and

I don’t think I had Maestro long enough to say it was the best, but it was up there. It seemed to have more power, more torque, and I’m certain it had more room. If pressed, four in the back with the boards wasn’t too uncomfortable, although inevitab

The worst wipeout of my life happened on the morning of June 3rd, 1995. I had been up until the early hours celebrating with Rob Bain, who had just beaten Kelly Slater and Tom Carroll in a late round of the inaugural G-Land Pro. We were drinking with

In the Hawaiian winter of 1987 I got a threeboard quiver from Pat Rawson. 7’6”, 8’4” and 9’6”, all pintails, all glassed by Jack Reeves and sanded by Charlie Walker in a couple of little sheds out behind Sunset Beach. The two smaller boards were pret

There was once a little bird who loved flying more than anything. Actually, I think most birds love to fly but this little fella’ really loved flying. Anyway, when he wasn’t doing the required bird things like pecking at the ground and decorating aut

I first heard about Cyclops around 2002. I believe it was Ken Bradshaw and photographer Ted Grambeau who went there on the Billabong Odyssey mission. I saw a photo of the wave but had no idea where it was taken; it was a bit of secret back then. Appa

For the past 15 years or so I’ve known Tom from surfing together around Hossegor, swapping surfboards in the water, checking out each other’s equipment and chasing the same uncrowded spots when the surf is really pumping. I’ve always enjoyed riding w

I bolted straight up in bed, heart pounding, gasping for breath. I looked around me in the dark: the wooden walls, the window between the beds, my 12-year-old son sleeping peacefully in the other one. I heard the old man in the next room, no more tha

White Horses is thrilled to run Mikala Jones’s incredible self portrait on the front cover of this edition. Mikala probably holds the record for being one of the most barrelled humans on earth after spending the past decade scouring Indo for empty ge