Surfing Waves

I recently started teaching a high school oceanography class. I'm putting together a few lessons on waves and wanted to find out the average depth of a few well-publicized surf spots around the world.

If anyone who knows the depth of these spots, please post:

Banzai Pipeline
Mavericks
Waimea
Blacks (the impact zone, not the canyon)
Todos Santos (killers)
Tres Palmas.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.


john "blackjack" hawks

umm, these aren't exact, or very correct.

I think both Mavericks and Waimea are both "deep water" breaks, I htink in the 40 foot depth range

Pipeline is a shallow reef break, like Teahpoo.

Sounds like an interesting class, what's your ciriculum?

oh yeah, if you check on Surfline or MSW they have a lot of information about breaks, possibly water depth.

Banzai...iits pretty shallow, you can see the reef from sitting on the board. I would guess on a flat day (no draining from the waves) about 5ft deep.
Mavericks, super deep!!! (thats all i know)
Waimea is in between. I think its just over 10ft.
Blacks - dont know!?
Todos, a 5ft reef..ouch

Teahupoo...wel...its kinda hard to say. I have been on the surf boat around there on a photoshoot...basically the reef is exposed at low tide even when the waves are 2ft!!...high tide its only like 10ft deep, bu when the waves are big, the water drains out completely and exposes the reef.

**You might want to get some pictures for the kids to see.


Hope it helps, Dec

yeah if you're reffing from a 0' tide on a flat day, there's not just one depth...


Like chopes is super deep then the bottom just jacks up creating that huge throwing lip and gets shallow, where it's breaking depends on how big it is.

like coretz is like 1600 ft deep and goes to 5 ft.... depending on the swell height will tell you how deep it is where it starts to break.

A wave feels the bottom from a long way out, but not much happens until the depth is 1.3x the above water wave height, and that's where it'll start break, but farther out with onshores and farther in with offshores.


kinda too many variables bro.

A good resource is the 1977 surfboard design and construction manual. Has a bunch of stuff about the science of waves and energy transfer, although if you are teaching the class, you probably know it.

Might still be worth it to check it out though, if you are interested, I'll look up the link on Swaylocks or just email you a .pdf copy.