I have been following an interesting thead on another site of late

forum.realsurf.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=17560

One of the responses from the esteemed Nick Carrol was interesting and I wondered what others thought of it.

Personal Disclaimer - I do occassional surf reports (unpaid) for Real Surf here in Manly - but only after I have been out in the water - and in all seriousness I do not think that there is anything that I could say that would influence crowd factors as its clearly an "Ultracrowd" spot as definded below. We tick all the boxes. Tourists, high density living, high transient population, webcams (2 at last count) etc

My thoughts are that the number of people surfing etc has gone through the roof based on the last ten years I have been living here in the lucky country. Yes I live in a very popular spot but mid week surfs are really busy these days. It was not that long ago when you could paddle out and get some great waves to yourself - or with just a handful of others - on the northern beaches. Maybe the whole place should be definded as an Ultracrowd. Whats it like at your place?


Headlander wrote: I may be having a whinge and the horse has already bolted but if as I've already said before if we generalise the reports and don't all ring our mates when we find waves then it may just help a little to lessen the crowd.


I reckon it might be the other way round.

Been doing a lot of actual research into this subject over the past coupla months for a series on another website (yes ASL) and discovered something amazing but true: the actual number of surfers in Australia over the past decade has not increased nearly as much as we might all think. Probably gone up by 10% or a bit less.

What HAS happened is that certain spots -- not many, but some -- have become "ultracrowded"...in other words, there's been a concentration of effort on a few select breaks, while many other waves go rolling on by semi unridden.

These certain spots -- places like Snapper, the Pass, Lennox, Avoca, Avalon, the Manly stretch, Bondi, etc -- all have a sort of toxic combination of things going for them. They tick all or a majority of the following boxes: forecast predictability, surf-cams, proximity to population, media exposure, reputation, ease of access. As a result they get so crowded at times that the typical hierarchy within a surf spot, constructed through skill, confidence, local knowledge and a sorta vague mutual understanding of who gets what, breaks down irreparably. That's an Ultracrowd, and that's when surfing gets dangerous -- when people crash into each other and cause life threatening injury, when the stress level rises way beyond the enjoyment level, when people begin to behave in a manically selfish fashion.

You've gotta think that there's another ingredient in the formation of Ultracrowds, and that's inexperience. Evidence suggests that there's a consistent turnaround in surf populations -- that while a proportion of surfers are committed and life long lunatics, a large proportion tend to last around three years in the sport before letting it slide for whatever reason (work? school? moving inland?). That 10% increase over the past 10 years masks a far greater number of start-ups than would at first appear; they're replacing the part timers and quitters. And surfers who haven't been at it very long are naturally prone to following the herd. They may not even really "see" a crowd before they paddle out; they just see people surfing and figure that's where they should be.

Ultracrowding isn't the Internet or whatever, it's human behaviour, and people change their behaviour over time. Maybe the best hope for everyone involved is that more of us learn to go look around the corner rather than just follow the pack.

A lot of interesting points in that thread, thanks for posting Ted. Technology and its effect on consolidating and/or dispersing crowds is a real issue.

I can understand where Headlander is coming from, as we suffer the same problem in my local area (which isn't that far from him). It is a problem of geography that afflicts a lot of semi-rural areas in Aus, where a large urban mass is perched within an hour or two's drive away. But it's not a new problem, it's been around forever. I remember having "f*kc off bunnies" waxed on to my qld-plated car once in the 70s when me a couple of mates parked up at Ballina north wall and had the hide to go for a surf.

Localism is not yet a problem at country/semi-country locations I surf at, and locals are generally OK with visiting surfers from Gotham City. But I will say this:

It is NOT ON to get on the mobile on the dune and call all your mates down to an uncrowded spot that's going off. If you do this, expect a mellow local pack to turn on you and your mates & deny you waves.

It is NOT ON for surf forecasters (web or radio) to specifically name locations (other than, possibly, the known ultracrowd spots). This especially applies to beachbreaks & even more especially to particular avenues or beach tracks, as happened to the bank at the end of my street a few months back.

And although i doubt whether Nick C's research is empirical, I think he is right - I don't believe the actual number of surfers has increased as much as many people think. Rather, they are just gravitating to the locations on the webcams and where they are told to go by forecasters. I don't remember Burleigh and Kirra 30 years ago being noticeably less crowded than Burleigh and Snapper are now (well, maybe a little less than Snapper).

The surfer who knows how to read a weather map, watches the wind and knows the set-ups 50kms in each direction of home will always do better than the lemmings who just rely on and obey the forecasters and cams. As Gandalf said - keep it secret, keep it safe.