"Stay happy and you'll be perfectly fine" - Jack Norris

29.01.09 news and cams of interest

Hi All

The best of the Australian surf cams I could find this morning was coastalwatch’s Margs cam. Proper waves out west for you lucky pups. Qld, NSW and Vic all look knee to waist high for the most part.

About the best live cam I could find overseas was wetsand.com’s Rocky Point unit on the north shore. Not super clean, but some size at least…

Looks as though today’s high tide spots will be the low tide spots for our kids and grandkids – according to the latest research from the CSIRO. Here’s a taste from the story on the ABC site.

Dr John Church told the committee a sea level rise of 80 to 90 centimetres by 2100 seems likely.

He says strong action now will not stop significant coastal disruption.

“We cannot prevent all sea level rise. We will have to adapt to some sea level rise,” he said.

The scientists say that uncertainty about melting icecaps means it is hard to predict the impact of rising sea levels on the Australian coastline.

I wonder what the rising tide’ll do to surf spots such as the Cliffs of Moher, Co. Clare, Ireland? According to this write up in the Santa Barbara Independent, there’s a good new surf movie about Irish surfing making its world debut in my old home town. The doco is called Waveriders and is the work of a guy named Joel Conroy. Here’s a bit of the blurb from the film’s website:

Waveriders is the previously untold story of the unlikely Irish roots of the worldwide surfing phenomenon and today’s pioneers of Irish big wave surfing. The story unfolds through the inspirational and ultimately tragic history of Irish/Hawaiian legendary waterman, George Freeth. Freeth, son of an Irishman, was responsible for the rebirth of this sport of Hawaiian kings in the early twentieth century. With its distinguished cast of world-renowned Irish, British and Irish/American surfers WAVERIDERS journeys full-circle from Hawaii to California and back to Irish shores following Freeth’s wave of influence. This journey reaches a spectacular climax when the surfers conquer the biggest swell ever to have been ridden in Ireland catching monster waves of over fifty feet.