(ABOVE) Luke Shepardson in “flow” during the 2023 Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational. “When people are in flow, their skills perfectly match the challenge they’re facing,” says sociologist Ugo Corte. “They are above boredom and just below anxiety. These rare situations require complete focus and result in outstanding performances, which are remembered as peak moments in someone’s life.” PHOTO BY CHRISTA FUNK
On January 22, 2023, fifty-foot waves broke across Waimea Bay, on Oahu's North Shore. After seven years of waiting, the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational was a go-the contest runs only when consistent, forty-foot waves hit the bay, and most years the swells aren't large enough. Among the thousands of spectators packing the beach and cliffs stood a bespectacled Italian scholar. Ugo Corte, an associate professor of sociology at Norway's University of Stavanger, had come to watch some of the surfers he'd been studying for more than a decade push themselves to the limit in one of surfing's most prestigious events.
Corte, a former pro skater, studies fun and creativity. He's written about "collaborative circles" (freestyle BMX bikers in North Carolina) and "dark fun" (Abu Ghraib). In June 2022, the University of Chicago Press published his ethnography, Dangerous Fun: The Social Lives of Big Wave Surfers, which is based on interviews with the North Shore's most daring athletes. "He illuminates surfers' mentality, diversity, self-expression, social bonds and rituals with dramatic narrative and extensive interviews," writes surfer William Finnegan. Much has been written and said about the Eddie, but rarely from a sociological perspective, and perhaps even more rarely with a focus on what it means to have fun.
Clyde Aikau, brother of the late Eddie Aikau, sits in the middle of a circle of surfers at Waimea. From a sociological perspective, Clyde “is the ‘sacred object’—a social marker of belonging upon which other surfers focus their attention,” Corte says. PHOTO BY JOHN HOOK
Big-wave surfing is so removed from most people's everyday lives. Why study it?
By developing a theory of fun, anybody can take something out of it. Big-wave surfing is just the case that helps me generate a theory, which is applicable in many different contexts.
There are three elements upon which fun depends: structural affordances, collaborative commitment and shared narrative. "Structural affordances" means simply time, places and spaces that are conducive to the intended activity. For instance, the ocean is an unpredictable setting, which lends itself both to surprise and excitement-the force, the sounds, the sudden appearance of large waves, the necessity to improvise and the intense focus required to do so. And you never really fully achieve the goal. Big-wave surfers are very simple: They go out, they come back. They survive. "Wow," they say. "I did what I was supposed to do."
The second element of fun, collaborative commitment, is the desire to engage in things that conform to the group culture alongside individuals with similar interests. If you go to a concert and you take a person who doesn't like the band, that's going to ruin it for everybody, because that person is not really focusing, they can't be fully immersed.
The last element is telling stories, creating a shared narrative. While many experiences may be memorable, they become cultural through discourse. Big-wave surfing is like a drug; it gives you dopamine, and it's extremely addictive because you have intermittent reinforcement-you never know what you're going to get, what you're going to score. At the end of the experience you have withdrawal symptoms. Fun, though, is much more long lasting because it's shared. If you're in the water thinking about catching waves, of course you can't have fun with everybody-there are boundaries. But if you start sharing, then you have something that brings you together in other settings and other situations. It grows. It percolates through time and space. What fun produces, ultimately, is cohesion.
Camaraderie and competition go hand-in-hand at the Eddie, partly because waves can be shared, frequently by choice. "This is an example of fun," Corte says of this moment. experienced it together can fully understand what it means." PHOTOGRAPH BY DONALD MIRALLE
Who's paddling out at Waimea? What's the social group like?
Waimea is a spot where you have a group made up of local surfers-maybe not all Native Hawaiians, but born and raised or have spent many years in the Islands-and lots of internationals, too, because people want to go to Hawaii and surf Waimea. But it's also a place where, unless everywhere else is blown out, pros don't really go. (It's changing now because you have floating devices.)
People think of subcultures like big-wave surfers as neo-tribes, as social worlds. These kinds of activities are encompassing, they represent so much of people's lives. Yet there is still an element of status. One classic sociologist, Max Weber, wrote about status as being a big motivator for what we do.
Earlier in your career, you take every risk that is given to you. You have to take every opportunity, and you gamble a lot. The better you get at surfing, the more you know what you're looking for. Once you get to a certain level, you have to balance a completely different kind of skill set. That is, you have to force yourself, because you already have enough of a reputation, to be patient and deal with boredom. So you take fewer trips in the year, as I found for the very top professionals. The chargers become what I call sharpshooters: They take fewer risks over the remaining time of their career, but when they take the risk, they risk more.
The top dogs, the top surfers at Waimea are the elders. They have acquired status. The older guys have had so many waves that they know what they're looking for. They do not need to be greedy, and they don't have obligations to sponsors. In having this status as kings of the spot, they can afford to share the wealth. That's also because the wave itself allows more than one rider at a time. So the older guys can let in new guys also because they have understood that life is more than getting three million waves.
The Waimea shorebreak dwarfs spectators gathered on the beach during the 2023 Eddie. Because the contest runs so infrequently, thousands come to watch the action. "Its rarity contributes to its intensity, adding to the excitement, fun and bonding," Corte says. PHOTOGRAPH BY KAMMERAN KEOLA
How did you find your way into this world?
I started the project in 2007. I was in Hawaii for six months. I befriended a crazy guy who was a tow-in partner of [big-wave surfing pioneer] Ken Bradshaw. That just randomly happened. I gave myself lots of time, and then I moved away from Hawaii, and I came back every year. Eventually, the situations aligned well, because that was an El Nino year. Waimea was breaking all the time. I was there, I put in the time, and eventually someone said, "Okay, you've talked to lots of people. You've taken lots of pictures. Now, man, you're coming back here by two o'clock, you're paddling out with us."
It was a giant day, and I really didn't want to do it. When I showed up, this group of people whose force and excitement made me realize I can't back out. I gotta go. I paddled out with them on a ten-foot gun. I stayed for a while, then I see this chip shot coming my way, and I'm bored, I'm cold, so I paddle for it. And I saw the thing giving some signs of being alive and it started to glide, and then it got into my mind, I said, you know what, maybe if a wave comes I can actually take it. And then a wave actually broke where I was, it was not a chip shot, and I took off, and that was exhilarating. When we got to the shorebreak, we got out and met afterwards for beers.
Eddie competitor Michael Ho takes a quiet moment away from the crowd to prepare before paddling out. "By talking to ourselves, we engage in mental simulation that help us gauge the consequences of different courses of action," Corte says. "We construct narratives with alternate endings." PHOTOGRAPH BY DONALD MIRALLE
What can non-surfers learn from big-wave surfing?
You can achieve anything if you find the right group of people at the right time. Lots of these theories I teach about creative groups are interesting. But ultimately it would be nice if people, after they've read them, after they've been exposed to them, look back and they will recognize the potential of the right kind of connection at the right time. Because we all will look back, 'Oh my god, we were there at the right time, both of us were living close to one another.' And besides complementarity of expertise, the most important thing is becoming friends. And if you have that kind of fun situation at the right time, you can bounce back so many ideas, much more than another group, because you don't even feel like you're working.
“There’s much satisfaction to be gained by holding yourself responsible for having gotten into a dire predicament, a sense of true authorship and agency,” Corte says. Here’s Kohl Christensen, taking responsibility. PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTA FUNK
How does the Eddie affect the surfers who compete in it?
What matters more than anything is the prestige, the status and the camaraderie. Luke [Shepard, who won the 2023 contest] does it to become part of the legend. Everybody that sees you and the people you care about know what you did that day, and that's going to live on forever.
A lifeguard on a jet ski stands by, ready to assist in case a surfer needs rescue. Lifeguards are “akin to the ferryman of Hades,” says Corte, “patrolling the thin line separating the worlds of the living and the dead.” Without them, he says, big-wave surfers wouldn’t take the risks that make the sport so rewarding—and so punishing. PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTA FUNK
"Reaching shore, stepping back onto the beach," says Corte, "is similar to having survived a battle." Here, North Shore lifeguard and contest underdog Luke Shepardson and his family celebrate his win-and his return. PHOTOGRAPH BY ARTO SAARI
