SURFING
Surf Conditions - Wavecams - Surf Spots - Surf
Prediction - BIG Waves - Surf Technology
Surf Safety - Learning to Surf - Surfing Law & Etiquette - Surfer Health - Wave Skis
Fullcircle Surf - Woolamai
Surf spots on the Mornington Peninsula
Peninsula Surfriders Club (Mornington Peninsula, Victoria)
RMIT Surfriders Club -
Australian Surfing Spots
Port
Phillip Bay - Sea Surface Temperature chart
Peninsula Surfshop
<<< This site is now owned by
Swellnet.
So unfortunately the following historic web page links are now "dead" (a
pity) ...
Western Port not the answer to channel deepening -
"the environmental effects statement for channel deepening in Port Phillip Bay departs seriously from effects statement guidelines in
refusing to consider alternatives. But we do not agree that the "real and genuine" alternatives should include Western Port ..."
Port of Melbourne Corporation
Point Two Point (Point2Point)
RMIT Surfriders Club - Victorian Surfing Spots
Peninsula Surfriders Club (Mornington Peninsula, Victoria)
Effect of Tertiary Treatment Option on Health Risk Assessments at Gunnamatta (ocean sewage outfall)
CSIRO gives Gunnamatta outfall ‘ok’
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Surf washes away the daily grind -
In Victoria's highest courts, Senior Counsel Chris Wren has never called on jurors to "hang 10".
But he does at home when the waves at his beloved Point Leo beckon.
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Surf conditions (rest of Australia) ...
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Swellnet
- Long range surf forecasting
and did you know this:
Why does the water get cold in Sydney after a nor'easter? -
See also: Predicting the Breaking Intensity of Surfing Waves
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coastalwatch.com -
many sites around Australia (some with top-class broadband streaming wavecams), plus some overseas sites.
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The BLUElink Project (Ocean Forecasting Australia) -
Forecasts now available to the public provide information on coastal and ocean currents and eddies, surface and subsurface ocean properties
(such as temperature), that impact and are linked to maritime and commercial operations, defence applications,
safety-at-sea, ecological sustainability, regional and global climate.
>> BLUElink Ocean Forecast Regions
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Australian Coastal Atlas
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Surfable Areas of Australia
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Weather Zone (Australia)
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The Weather Channel (Australia)
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Surfers Village
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Australia East Surfing Conditions & Forecasts
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Surfcam Australia
>> Bondi cam
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fluidzone.com
>> Wave Watch
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Surf Locate
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WannaSurf
>> World Surf Atlas
- Queensland Sunshine Coast surf report
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Greenmount Surf Breaks (Queensland) - Duranbah (D-Bah), Snapper Point, Little Mali, Greenmount Point, Kirra Point
- Queensland Wave Finder
>> Surf safety
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Brownie's Coastwatch (Queensland)
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GOTO - Godfathers Of The Ocean - Queensland
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Weather to surf
- for Australian east coast - Get latest surf reports for your area sent to
your phone via SMS
- WaveCam - "Watching Australia's Waves"
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Illawarra
Surf >>
Surfable
areas of Australia
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Castaway Surfing
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New South Wales Coast Ocean Wave Data
>>
Latest NSW Offshore Wave Heights
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Shelly Beach - New South Wales central coast
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Western Australia ...
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Australian Antarctic Division webcams
- Tasmania - including Shipstern Bluff / Shipsterns Bluff ...
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THE PRICE OF WAVES - What will it cost to ride Shipstern Bluff?
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Stranger Surfboards
>> Tasmania surf spots - "Strange Locations"
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WannaSurf
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Shipstern ("Totally epic, in the top 30") - including amazing photos!
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shipsterns.com (order Tasmanian Wilderness Surfing Calendar 2006/2007)
- Taking on the Giant (Shipstern Bluff) -
"I walked into Shipsterns bluff every few months, just to remind myself that it was there,
that yes Mother Nature is indeed boss, and to bask in the amazing natural beauty and energy
that permeates from the area." ... "For a surfer living in Tasmania, to drop into the abyss
of a hissing Shipstern monster and come out at the end unscathed is nothing short of the holy grail." ...
"Bodyboarders and surfers from all around the world come to test themselves on its heaving, icy waves."
(includes video clips)
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The SURFER magazine: Kieren Perrow interview
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The Chemistry of Fear -
"Because it's on the very southern area of Tasmania you already feel like you're at the edge of the earth. Then here's these huge
1000 foot cliffs that hang over the place, so the whole place is pretty daunting. At one point in the trail as you're hiking in you
can spot the wave from a mile or so away and it's just amazing. It's so wild and cold, it's like nothing I'd ever experienced
before. The world is just dwarfing you. Once you get out there you find the takeoff zone is only 40-yards in front of these massive
boulders. And you have to take the sets because the smaller ones throw you right up on those rocks. The only thing you have going
for you is the current pulls you away from the rocks into the channel if you're lucky enough to avoid them on your wipeout.
..."
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Shipstern Bluff - I don't wannasurf there. Is that the ugliest wave in the world, or what?
... "Bluff Reef was not a very famous or local spot people would surf. It Requires S-SE winds, 6 foot swell
and can hold up to 30 foot. This rigthander also requires a medium to high tide to cover the sharp treacherous reef below."
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Tasmania - The Last Sanctuary? (Shipstern Bluff)
- Tour of Tasmania: Nubeena -
Cape Raoul State Reserve, to the south of town, offers a cliff walk along Shipstern Bluff.
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SurfTasmania.com -
Coastview - Tasmania Surfing - Tasmania's coastal watch
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International Women's Surfing - IWS
Ozwind -
graphical representation of wind speed and direction across Australia
The Australian Coastal Atlas
Australian Sky & Weather -
incorporating Melbourne Storm Chasers
Surfing Australia -
"recognised by the Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Olympic Committee as the governing body of the sport of surfing in Australia.
Surfing Australia is Australia's representing body for the international Surfing Association of which there are 42 member countries
all recognised by their respective federal government."
A Pictorial History of Surfing in South Australia
Podsurf.tv - "Take your surfing with you" (video clips, etc)
Wavemap
>> Surf in Sydney -
Surf in Cornwall
RealSurf Australia - Daily surf reports (especially Sydney northern and southern beaches)
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Surfing in Australia's neighbor countries ...
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Wild Weather - Thursday 03 February 2004
An intense 150-year freak mid-summer depression - described as a
"southern Australia cyclone" - passed over the Victoria-Bass
Strait-Tasmania region. It was Melbourne's coldest recorded February day.
Other places in the state were colder - it even snowed in the
Victorian alps. The maximum temperature was 13.2 Celsius in downtown Melbourne
(in stark contrast it reached 36 Celsius two days earlier). Also, moist
air sucked in from the southwestern Pacific caused the heaviest
February rainfall across Victoria since weather records began in 1855.
Click the image to see a four-step colour infrared animation of the cyclone.
This shows the clockwise southern-hemisphere cyclonic airflow,
mixing cold Antarctic air with warm, moist Pacific Ocean air.
Bass Strait ocean was like a huge froth-filled washing machine, far too cold
and dangerous to try surfing (except for the foolhardy or daring, at those
few relatively protected spots like Point Leo or Shoreham inside Western Port Bay and Kerferd
Road inside Port Phillip Bay).
Images are
Copyright
Commonwealth of Australia 2005, Bureau of Meteorology.
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A river of smoke more than 25 kilometers wide flowed
southeast toward the Tasman Sea from fires burning in the Great
Dividing Range Mountains in Victoria, Australia, on December 5,
2006. This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS)
on NASA’s Terra
satellite shows the smoke crossing Ninety Mile Beach and
spreading out over the sea. Fires (red outlines) were detected
across a broad area of the mountains between Lake Eildon and the
Dartmouth Reservoir. |
Fires in Victoria, Australia - 05 December 2006
Here's a somewhat similar
image, but in this case the swirl is anticlockwise (the storm
above, being a southern cyclonic depression, was swirling clockwise). To quote
this NASA Earth Observatory article:
According to news
reports, 50 fires—most of them in remote forests and parks—were
burning out of control across Victoria in early December, and
fire conditions were predicted to worsen in subsequent days.
Across Australia in 2006, fires sprang up before summer was even officially underway.
An ongoing drought and high temperatures have created extremely risky conditions
for fires in many parts of the country. In late November and early December,
satellites captured numerous images of fires in places as far flung as
northwestern Australia and Southern Queensland. (See other images in the
Natural Hazards: Fires section.) In most of Victoria (among
other places in the country), rainfall in the six months
preceding the outbreak of these fires was categorized as either
at a “severe deficiency” or “lowest on record,” according to
maps provided by the Website of the Australian government’s
Bureau of Meteorology.The Bureau’s 22 November seasonal
El
Niño-Southern Oscillation update indicated that the current
El Niño had strengthened throughout November. A strong El Niño
could be bad news for firefighters in southeastern Australia.
According to the Bureau of Meteorology Website, “El Niño events
are associated with an increase in the number of extreme
fire-risk days over southeastern Australia, that is, days which
are hot, dry and windy.”
In distinct contrast, during late December south-eastern
Australia suffered an icy southwesterly blast for several days.
On Christmas Day 2006 it was even cold enough for snow to fall in Victoria and
Tasmania! |
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Worldwide Surfing ...
Surfers of Faith
>> Global Surf Reports
WannaSurf World Surf Atlas
- "65 countries, 176 regions, 192 maps, 1478 spots"
Surf Locate - "84 Countries, 214 Regions, 234 maps, 3462 Spots" (as at
May 2004)
Magic Seaweed (MSW)
/ MagicSeaweed.com - global surf forecasts, surf reports, surf webcams,
wave buoy data.
Surf-Forecast.com
wetSand
iSurf DV-zine -
Australia's first DVD surfing magazine
Bamboo Surfboards
Australia >>
Bamboo board types
Surfa Sports >>
Surfa Girl -
Surfa
Design Facts and History -
The beginning of Surfing
Swaylock's Surfboard Design Forum
>> Surfboard Design
- Surfboard History
surefresearch.com.au
Gary Birdsall's Surf Art
Duke Kahanamoku (the Father of Surfing) & The Dawn of Australian Surfing
George Freeth, Father of Surfing (in California)
Surfing Worldwide - The Virtual Library of Sport
Les Drent's
History of Surfing
ASP - The Association of Surfing Professionals
>> About the ASP
International Women's Surfing - IWS
The HEADZONE Sports Coaching & Communications System - enables the coach to communicate directly
with the athlete on the water, in the field or in the sky using a waterproof radio helmet.
Time to stand up and be counted
Organisers of a world record surfing bid say 73 surfers rode the same wave at a South African beach
on Sunday [17 September 2006]. ... "We have smashed the record," said veteran surfer Paul Botha,
who helped organise the feat at Muizenberg Corner near Cape Town, a favoured haunt for surfers.
... Guinness World Records will be told about 300 surfers were involved, with 73 surfers standing up
on the same wave for more than five seconds. The previous record was set off the west coast of Ireland
when 44 people caught the same wave in May.
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Earthwave 2007 extends the record to 84 surfers
The Earthwave Global Surf Challenge is an initiative created by the Cape Town based Kahuna Surfing Academy that showcases the
global nature of the surfing community, highlights their environmental concerns and issues a "call to action" on how we
can reduce our impact on climate change.
Read some more about it here
and here
and
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a three-year full-time or equivalent part-time degree offered by the South West Campus (Bunbury, Western Australia)
provides an opportunity for well-qualified individuals with an interest in surfing
to pursue the scientific and technological aspects of the surfing industry.
Bachelor of Science in Surf Industry Technology -
a 3-year degree program which aims to provide students with the knowledge and
skills required for employment in the Surf Industry. A full fee course –
students must pay “up-front” each semester. It is anticipated that the program will commence in 2004.
DEAD LINK (DOES IT EXIST ANY MORE?)
BSc. (Hons)
degree in Surf Science and Technology - University of Plymouth
Study Spanish and Surf -
in Ecuador,
El Salvador,
Mexico
or Spain
Worldsurfers >>
Newsflash - The latest in surf contest results
"Surfing" -
article by by Mark Twain
Anthony's Board Building Links
SurfersEye.com
(surfing pictures) ...
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- Magic Surf Bus
- San Diego Supercomputer Center
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Surfer resources
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The Law of Surfing
- Summary of program on ABC Radio National (Australia) on Friday 15/03/2002:
"Surfing has an unwritten code of behaviour that protects people from injury e,g., not cutting in
on anybody when they're on a wave and making sure everyone gets a fair share of waves.
However crowded conditions and an increased number of surfers has meant this code
may need to become more official. If litigation was to occur in the surfing world
many would feel the soul of surfing had been destroyed."
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Surfing Culture & Psychology ...
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About Surfing / Bodyboarding
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BIG waves
- See also:
Cow Bombie (in the Western Australia
section, above)
- A sample
JAWS
BIG WAVE PICTURE (Note: Webshots.com
pages tend to change from time to time)
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Mavsurfer >> Watch clips like these: ...
"The Ride" (Jaws, Maui) -
Todos Santos Monsters -
Cortes Bank
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SurfPulse
>>
Shark Encounter at Maverick's (September 2001)
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Mid-Ocean
Monster Waves Draw Surfers
and
Wave expert tackles
Maui's monster curls
and Dustin at Jaws
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Maui's monster surf break getting bigger by the day -
"Jaws -— or Pe'ahi, as many locals call it -- offers some of the largest surfable waves on earth.
About a dozen times each winter, wave faces reach 40 to 60 feet and more from trough to peak, taller than a four- to five-story building."
>> Be sure also to visit
TowSurfer.com and watch some of the Jaws videos!
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Dan Moore and his legendary 68-foot wave at Jaws on the north coast of Maui on December 15, 2004
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Surfers ride watery giants -
"The waves have been nicknamed Cyclops, Jaws and Dungeons and are the new life-and-death
playground for a unique breed of surfers who ride gargantuan ocean waves as big as a seven storey building.
Australian surfer Alex Cater, 25, has been chasing giant waves for the past five years and knows only too well
the agony and ecstasy of what they call tow-in surfing, where a surfer is whipped by jet ski into giant waves
bigger than most tsunamis. In July, at an offshore reef called Cowaramup Bombie off Margaret River in Western Australia,
Cater was part a group of surfers who tackled the biggest waves ever ridden in Australia. ..."
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Video ... La Vague vs Le Surfer (The Wave versus the Surfer) -
Sur la musique thème de Hawaii 5-0 - La Vague vs Le Surfer. Incroyable Vague ou Incroyable Surfer?
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Video --- Surf Sessions at Jaws, Maui, Hawaii -
"Sessions de surf tracté par des professionnels locaux (ne pas imiter) sur des vagues estimées entre 10 et 15m ; les vagues
mesurées sur ce spot ont parfois dépassé les 20 mètres. Ces journées exceptionnelles sont appelées "BIG WEDNESDAY"
si ça s'est passé un mercredi par exemple. A ce jour, pas de mort sur ce spot.
[Webmaster: This clip includes one of the longest left slides that you'll ever see,
starting at about 1 minute 55 seconds into the video.]
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Surf sur les vagues géantes de Belharra (Video - November 2002 - Location: Saint Jean de Luz, Basque country, France) -
"Voici un document exceptionnel, des vagues de plus de 10 mètres surfées pour la toute première fois sur le "spot" de Belharra en France.
La vague de Belharra déferle sur un haut fond rocheux au large de la corniche qui sépare les deux villes de St Jean de Luz et d'Hendaye (64).
Six surfeurs de haut niveau, équipés de trois jetskis, avides d'adrénaline et d'émotions fortes, osent s'aventurer au large dans des conditions de mer
complètement titanesques pour affronter ces vagues monstrueuses... jusqu'alors inconnues... L'émotion suscitée par la conquête de nouveaux horizons
traverse l'esprit de la majorité des surfeurs... mais il fallait ce jour là avoir une sacrée dose de courage et une préparation physique
a toute épreuve pour oser affronter ces vagues géantes."
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- Red Bull Reef Seekers -
looking for BIG waves to ride near King Island in Bass Strait, southern Australia
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Monster Waves clips (NTSC format - 720x486 30fps)
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Riding Giants -
Mavericks of the monster waves
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The Big Swell
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TowSurfer.com !!!!!
- Tow Surfing Adventures -
"on a mission to find and conquer unridden waves from exotic locations around the world."
... Jaws, Cortes Bank, the Psychos Project, and more!
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Ain't no wave scary enough
- Big Wave Surfing
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Jamie Scott Photography (Western Australia)
>> Cyclops
- WB Surfing
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2008 Billabong XXLGlobal Big Wave Awards (pictures of nominees, including some video links)
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Surf's up - if you can endure the wind chill (County Sligo, Ireland - February 2008)
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Film captures massive waves as Sligo, Donegal coastline gets battered (December 2007)
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Catching a wave, Celtic style (County Sligo, Ireland - March 2008)
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Biggest Wednesday video - "Never in the history of surfing has the
ocean roared as hard and as full-on as Wednesday the 28th of January 1998, to create the biggest surf ever to be ridden. Surfers are towed
into 30 to 50-foot walls of death. ..."
- FreeSurfVideo.com
>> Big Wave Surfing
>> Powerade surfing commercial (and others)
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Big winter waves headed for O'ahu -
People wanting to see the waves should avoid beaches without lifeguards and areas close to the ocean. ...
Because not every wave is large enough to wash ashore, people are lured to the edge
and can be swept to their deaths when a larger wave arrives."
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Surfing Waves
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Killer Waves - Scientists are learning how to predict tsunami risk
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Hunt for the 30m monster -
Big waves and big cash form a thrilling but dangerous combination (Billabong XXL challenge)
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Some Surfing Health Issues ...
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What's That You Said? Surfer's Ear? - after 20 San Diego winters the SurfShot Magazine articlewriter's ears
are over 90% closed, and a recent study at the American Academy of Otolaryngology says that 40% of surfers suffer from
external auditory exostosis -- also known as "surfer's ear" -- and the ailment is more likely to occur
if you surf for long periods in wintery conditions. ... "Cold water surfers were six times more likely to have exostosis
than those who surfed in predominantly warm water. If the bony growth continues it may result in total hearing loss, in which case
surgery (canaloplasty) may be called on to restore hearing. Exostosis can also create another serious ear problem: it can hinder
proper drainage of the ear canal, which can lead to very painful ear infections."
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A study by Peninsula Health,
Prevalence of external auditory canal exostoses in Australian surfboard riders confirms this finding:
This study found that a male surfer who has surfed regularly for 20 years or more has a one in two chance
of developing significant obstruction of the external ear canal resulting from exostoses.
For females, the chance is three in seven. Cold-qwater swimmers are also at risk.
Earplugs apparently aren't always enough to prevent the problem. Regular ocean-goers are urged
to protect their ears from exposure to the cold with neoprene, headbands, hats and helmets.
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SunSmart - a key education program of
The Cancer Council Victoria with the aim to lead, co-ordinate, implement
and evaluate action to minimise the human cost of skin cancer in Victoria.
Provides information about sunburn and sun protection.
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BUT ...
Study shines light on possible MS cause
(due to reduced levels of vitamin D) -
research shows growing evidence of a link to sunlight and vitamin D, and the further people live from the equator
the greater the rate of multiple sclerosis (MS).
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Sea Specs -
Polarized, polycarbonate, lightweight, extreme sunglasses specifically designed for outdoor water sports
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