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See what it's like to ride the tallest wave ever surfed

This wall of water has broken the world record as the largest wave ever to be surfed.
Brazilian surfer Rodrigo Koxa surfed the 80-foot wave in Nazaré, Portugal.
The feat took place in November 2017 but the wave and surfer are just now being honored by the World Surf League’s Big Wave Awards.

From National Geographic by  Elaina Zachos

On the same day Rodrigo Koxa surfed a record-breaking wave, another surfer had a close call with death.

Surf’s up for Rodrigo Koxa … way up.

On November 8, 2017, the 38-year-old Brazilian surfer caught an 80-foot-tall wave in Praia do Norte off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal.

On April 28, the World Surf League gave him the Quiksilver XXL Biggest Wave Award padded with a $25,000 prize.

Koxa’s ride also broke a Guinness World Record for the biggest wave ever surfed.
“I'm just so happy and this is the best day of my life,” Koxa said at the awards.

“It’s a dream come true.”

Other winners include surfers Lucas Chianca, Paige Alms, Aaron Gold, and Ian Walsh. British surfer Andrew Cotton, who broke his back after a fall on the same day and in the same place as Koxa’s record-breaking feat, was awarded the Wipeout of the Year Award.

Previously, the record was set by Hawaii’s Garrett McNamara in 2011 with a 78-foot-tall wave off the same coast.

Other surfers have said they broke that 2011 record, but Koxa’s wave was confirmed—experts can measure a wave from trough to crest by comparing it with the size of the people surfing it.

(Related: “What Surfing Teaches You About Life”) 

 

Surfer today

Surf’s Up

In the video, a jet ski drags Koxa up the wave.

In less extreme waters, surfers usually paddle up waves before standing up and riding them, but since Koxa’s 80-foot-tall roller is too fast, towing in on a jet ski allows him to get closer.

The jet ski releases him and in seconds, the powerful waters surge up to him.

Koxa barely manages to evade the wave as it rushes like an avalanche behind him.

Koxa is an experienced surfer and escaped unscathed—this time.

In 2014, he had a brush with death at the same beach.

The experience sent him into a four-month slump where he had nightmares, didn’t travel, and got scared easily.

It’s no coincidence that Koxa and Cotton both rode enormous waves at the same beach on the same day.

The beach’s location and geography make it prime territory and a magnet for intrepid surfers.

Although one surfer got away from the wave with a broken record, the other barely got away with a broken back.

Wicked Waves

The waves of Praia do Norte are famous for being among the largest in the world. 

The beach’s westerly location on the European coast allows it to catch wind, and thus ocean swells, from storms that sweep across the North Atlantic.

A deep canyon runs under the surf and points toward the town, which focuses the ocean swells directly toward the lighthouse at the edge of Nazaré. Nazaré Canyon, the underwater abyss, is 130 miles long and as deep as 16,000 feet below the ocean’s surface in some areas.

“The ocean swells get focused in this submarine canyon and have much more energy,” surfer and forecaster Micah Sklut told NPR in 2013.

“So, first you’ve got really deep water, and then as it approaches the shore it gets very shallow, and that enables the waves to climb really, really big all of a sudden.”

Nazaré’s undersea geography make it particularly unique, but it’s not the only place to catch a big wave.

Other popular surfing spots with towering waves are Teahupo’o in Tahiti, Oahu’s Banzai Pipeline, the Cortes Bank near Los Angeles, and Northern California’s Mavericks.

Links :

• Guinness book : A timeline of the biggest waves surfed as Rodrigo Koxa sets new record
• GeoGarage blog :Nazaré, black Carnival / Big surf in Nazare : a closer look / Big wave surfing Nazaré Portugal / Surf spots roar back to life as strong Atlantic swell ... / Surfer rides 90 foot wave (World Record) / Chasing the world's biggest wave: Surfer turns to ...

James Cook: The Voyages

A visualisation created with GoogleEarth, showing the track of the James Cook's Endeavour voyage of 1768-1771.

The pages from the Endeavour journal are also synchronised with the timeline.
(other view)

From Geographical by Katie Burton and Paul Presley

To reflect the 250th anniversary of James Cook’s first voyage in 1768, this exhibition at the British Library charts the discoveries made by the great explorer

A close look at world maps from the 15th to 18th centuries shows that some European cartographers got one thing very wrong.
A mysterious land mass at the bottom, surrounding what we now know to be Antarctica, reveals the long-held European belief in a ‘Great Southern Continent’.
Finding this land, and securing a friendly relationship with its people, was one of the secret goals of James Cook’s first voyage, in 1768, on the ship HMS Endeavour.

Cook’s chart of New Zealand shows the course of the Endeavour as the ship circumnavigated the North Island and then the South Island.

Over the course of his three voyages Cook was not only able to disprove the notion of the Great Southern Continent, but also to fill in other blank spaces on the map.
A new exhibition, curated by the British Library to coincide with the 250th anniversary of Cook’s first voyage, brings together a huge array of artwork, original maps and handwritten journals from each seminal expedition.

Laid out chronologically, the exhibition moves through each of the voyages, stopping off, as Cook and his crew did, at different islands and previously uncharted lands.
Each new room represents a stop on the first voyage, which began in the South Pacific, landing first at Tierra del Fuego and then Tahiti.
Between each such ‘voyage’ the exhibition’s path takes visitors ‘back to London’ to explore the after-effects, scientifically and politically, of each journey and to set the stage for Cook’s subsequent travels.

What those of us less familiar with Cook’s voyages may not know is that as well as the requisite sailors, he was joined by artists and botanists.
On the first voyage, this was largely down to Joseph Banks, a wealthy landowner and botanist who paid to join Cook on the Endeavour.
As a result, the exhibition is crammed with art that attempts to bring the people and places the crew encountered to life.

'Inhabitants of the Island of Terra del Fuego in their Hut' by Alexander Buchan 1769

(Image: British Library Board)

There are drawings of the Huash people, native to the island of Tierra del Fuego, by Scottish artist Alexander Buchan; depictions of the Maori by Sydney Parkinson, who died on the voyage back to Britain; huge Pacific panoramas and visions of Antarctic icebergs by William Hodges and engravings of tribal ceremonies by John Webber.
Intriguingly, there are also drawings presumed to be the work of Tupaia, a native high priest of Tahiti who joined Cook on the Endeavour as it continued to New Zealand.

Tahitian Scene by Tupaia

(Image: British Library Board)

Natural history also features heavily.
In the New Zealand room we find a depiction of a kangaroo by Sydney Parkinson – the first European to capture the iconic animal.
The accompanying plaque details the party’s discovery of an animal ‘as large as a greyhound, of a mouse colour and very swift’.

There are a small number of specimens on display.
Highlights include a necklace from Tierra del Fuego, a reindeer-skin quiver from the Chukotsky Peninsula, and the mouthparts of a squid, collected by Joseph Banks once he’d disposed of the body in a delicious soup.
Details such as this serve to make the exhibition particularly memorable.

'Entertainments at Lifuka on the reception of Captain Cook' by John Webber 1777

Interspersed among the historic artefacts are videos, specially produced for the exhibition and including the nation’s favourite documentarian, Sir David Attenborough.
It is here that the curators attempt to tackle the troubling side of Cook’s legacy, from imperialism in Australia and violent encounters with the Maori in New Zealand to the beginnings of a devastating fur trade.
In the final such piece, Nick Tupara, an artist of the Ngāti Oneone tribe in New Zealand, speaks directly to camera: ‘I think our people still feel a tension about the whole Cook story, the way it’s told here and the lack of ability to have their say.’

To help provide this necessary context to the subject, the British Library is commissioning a series of accompanying photography exhibits by Pacific groups consulted throughout the curation of the main gallery – the idea being to form a ‘response’ to the main exhibit by those that most felt the eventual ramifications of Cook’s voyages.

This illustration shows Captain James Cook's portrait with his ships.

It is taken from a 19th-centry book about Arctic expeditions.
"Do just once what others say you can't do,

and you will never pay attention to their limitations again."

James R. Cook

It’s certainly to the curators’ credit that they haven’t shied away from the more controversial aspects of Cook’s voyages.
Confronting entrenched viewpoints is very much at the forefront of modern society and to have turned a blind eye to the more worrisome actions of the past would have done the subject a disservice.

That said, despite a conviction at the beginning of the exhibit (in which the introductory video warns that some of what follows may be troubling), there is a sense throughout that the potential for controversy has imbued the entire exhibition with a feeling of reservation.
Aside from the opulent ‘London’ rooms, there’s very little ‘decoration’ in the voyage areas, a surprising sparsity of framing information which can leave those not already possessing a good degree of knowledge of Cook and his journeys feeling somewhat lost as to the context behind many of the exhibits.
Small globes adorn the start of each area purportedly showing the routes, but they’re fiddly to use and can easily be overlooked during busier times, ultimately leaving visitors sometimes feeling a touch lost as to where they currently are along the path of each voyage.
Large wall maps might have served better along with a greater visualisation of background information.

Strangely, the impression is almost as if by wanting to address the more controversial aspects of Cook’s legacy, a potential to offend has held the exhibition designers back.
That not shouting too loudly about Cook’s endeavours is what’s needed when instead a more bold addressing of the issues would have served everyone better.

Nevertheless, the exhibition skilfully interweaves this complex legacy with the wealth of materials on display and the knowledge that Cook unearthed.
The take-home message is that Cook was important, but not without controversy.

 Third voyage

COOK’S THREE VOYAGES

First voyage (1768-1771): The official mission of Cook’s first voyage was to track the planet Venus from Tahiti. Cook travelled first to Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago off the southernmost tip of South America, then on to Tahiti. He then ventured west to New Zealand where he spent six months charting the coast, proving as he went that the land was not a northern extension of the Great Southern Continent, as many had believed. One of the jewels of the exhibition is Cook’s remarkably accurate map of New Zealand. He finished the voyage charting the unexplored eastern parts of ‘New Holland’ (the name given by the Dutch to Australia in the 17th century).

Second voyage (1772-75): Cook was ordered by the Admiralty to sail south from the tip of Africa, once again on the hunt for the missing southern continent. In disproving the existence of the continent once and for all, Cook led the first expedition to ever cross the Antarctic circle.

 Exploration of the South Pole, 1899

showing Cook voyage

Third voyage (1776-80): The third voyage was to be Cook’s last. It was on this trip that he met his end in ambiguous circumstances on the island of Hawaii (indeed, a display of reports written by eyewitnesses to Cook’s demise makes for gruesome reading). The goal of the expedition was to explore the North Pacific and search for a sea passage to the Atlantic – a passage which, like the southern continent, did not exist.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Capt. James Cook raised an ocean of knowledge / Charting the Land on the Ocean : Pacific ... / World Globe 1790 - David Rumsey Historical Map Collection / The man who invented the Admiralty chart and ... / The age of sail and European empire / Polynesian navigators revive a skill that was nearly ...

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Russia launched a floating nuclear power plant

Russia's controversial floating nuclear power plant has headed out for its first sea voyage.

The Akademik Lomonosov left the St. Petersburg shipyard on Saturday and will be towed through the Baltic Sea and around the northern tip of Norway to Murmansk, where its reactors are to be loaded with nuclear fuel. 

The project has been widely criticized by environmentalists.

From ArsTechnica by Megan Geuss

On Saturday a new floating nuclear power plant left St. Petersburg, Russia, towed by two boats.
The two-reactor, 70MW floating power plant is headed through the Baltic Sea and north around Norway, to a Russian town called Murmansk, where the boat will receive its fuel.

After a period of time in Murmansk, the power plant will be towed to a small Arctic town called Pevek, according to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
The floating nuclear power plant, called the Akademik Lomonosov, doesn't have any of its own propulsion hardware, so being slowly towed to its destination is a necessity.
The company that built the plant, state-owned Rosatom Corporation, said in a press release that the second stage of the journey, from Murmansk to Pevek, will commence in 2019, with fuel and crew aboard the boat/power plant.

ST Petersburg, Russia - April 28, 2018: The Akademik Lomonosov, a barge containing two nuclear reactors, leaves St Petersburg.

Once the plant reaches Pevek, it will be used to power the 100,000-person town, a desalination plant, and oil rigs. Rosatom says that the Lomonosov is intended to replace the region's Bilibino nuclear power plant, which provides 48MW of nuclear power and was built in 1974, as well as the Chaunskaya Thermal Power Plant, which is now 70 years old.
Bilibino was once the northern-most nuclear power plant in the world, but after the Lomonosov is in operation, it will inherit that title.

The project has not been without the kinds of delays that nuclear projects seem to inevitably face: in 2015, the Norway-based website Barents Observer wrote that the Lomonsov would be put into service by October 2016.

source : NTI

Meanwhile, critics are concerned that a floating nuclear power plant is a situation ripe for disaster if the boat encounters extreme weather.
In a statement, Greenpeace nuclear expert Jan Haverkamp cited concerns about the Lomonsov's flat-bottomed hull and its lack of self-propulsion despite the fact that it is intended to be anchored in relatively shallow water.

Rosatom's press release states that "All necessary construction works to create on-shore infrastructure are underway in Pevek. The pier, hydraulic engineering structures, and other buildings, crucial for the mooring of FPU [floating power unit] and operation of a FNPP [floating nuclear power plant] will be ready to use upon Akademik Lomonosov arrival."

A likely reason why Russia would want a floating power plant?
The region in which it will be stationed is quite remote, and moving machinery out by land is far more expensive than moving it by sea.
Deutsche Welle points out that climate change has made it easier for Russia to use northern sea routes for transportation between the country's west and east regions.

Correction: This story originally said that the Lomonsov was the world's first floating nuclear power plant but in fact the US military used a floating nuclear power plant on the Sturgis in Panama between 1968 and 1975.

Links :

• Barent Observer : Cold War heritage secured, but now comes new wave of maritime reactors
• Silicon republic : Russia’s tsunami-proof ‘nuclear Titanic’ takes to the open seas
• The Diplomat : China’s Risky Plan for Floating Nuclear Power Plants In The South China Sea
• The Drive : Here's What We Know About Russia's New Floating Nuclear Power Plant Heading To The Arctic
• RT : Media meltdown as Russia’s first floating nuclear power goes on fueling trip
• Greenpeace : World’s first floating nuclear power plant bound for the Arctic, warns Greenpeace