Shark Park- Southern California's biggest "unknown" surf spot

Off the west coast of an island, that most of the 23 million southern Californians don't even know exists, there's a wave, a huge wave, that can be surfed.  Thousands of seals and sea lions are usually sitting onshore nearby, a all-you-can-eat buffet for the great white sharks cruising underwater nearby.  This is the little known surf break called Shark Park, off the west coast of San Miguel Island, the farthest west of the eight Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California.  

 Although I lived for about 20 years in Huntington Beach, I never learned to surf.  I was a diehard BMX freestyler most of those years, from 1987-2008, and a fat taxi driver for the last few.  In the freestyle days, I knew that once I learned to surf, I'd never want to stop, so I never learned, and focused on BMX, with a little skateboarding mixed in.  I did go boogie boarding now and then, so I did get out in the water, and caught some small waves that way.  

For that big chunk of my life in Huntington Beach, although I didn't surf, I was surrounded by surfers.  So I would hear about the surf every day, "It's overhead on the south side (of the pier) today,"  "Nice shoulder high A-frames at Tower 14,"  "It's flat, just little ankle slappers."  "Fuck... black ball."  So I got to know a bit about the waves, and surfing life.  

When I lived on 15th Street, three blocks from the beach, in the late 90's, my neighbors and I would all watch Shark Week TV shows in the afternoons, then go surfing and body boarding at dusk, trying not to think about sharks.  Over the best part of 20 years, I was hearing about the waves, the surf, and the surfing world, nearly every day.  I even managed to get footage of "Boxcars" breaking once, (not my footage), a swell that breaks about 1/4 mile offshore, off the H.B. cliffs, about once every 10-15 years.  Unfortunately, I lost that footage, with all my other video footage, in a move in 2008. 

When it came to big waves, Hawaii was the place, particularly the North Shore in the 1980's when I first lived among surfers.  We all knew about Pipeline and Waimea Bay.  In 1988, working for a video company in Costa Mesa, I was sent down to shoot video of The Wedge, in Newport Beach, on a 15-20 foot day.  So I learned about that one firsthand, and shot footage of another big day there in about 2006.  In the 1990's, I remember everyone suddenly learning about this unknown, gigantic wave in Northern California, called Mavericks.  The mega waves, off Half Moon Bay, surfed for 15 years by a few locals, finally became known to the rest of the surfing world.  

Tow-in surfing had been happening in Hawaii for a while, and really big waves, like Jaws/ Peahi, in Hawaii, were believed to be about the biggest anywhere, at the time.  But after Mavericks became widely known, it seemed surfers worldwide began seeking out new spots with gigantic waves.  The annual XXL contest prize, for the biggest waves surfed, sparked a search for even bigger, surfable waves.  Teahupoo, in Tahiti, Todos Santos in Baja California, Mexico, and the Cortes Banks, in the middle of the ocean, 80 or so miles off San Diego or Dana Point, became known.  Years later, Nazare, in Portugal, rose to prominence with the biggest waves ever surfed.  Here are a few more big waves, mostly without surfing in involved to remind you how crazy the ocean can get.

Life banished me to the Eastern Seaboard for a decade, so maybe I missed it.  But I never, ever heard of Shark Park when I lived in Huntington Beach.  Not until a couple of days ago, when I was looking up some videos about the archeology on the Channel Islands, something else I'm interested in.  Arlington Springs Man, found on Santa Rosa island, is the oldest human remains found in North America, over 13,000 years old.  The skeleton seems to pre-date the crazy Younger Dryas era, possibly the craziest period humans have lived through.  You have to be a serious archeology geek to understand those last few sentences.  

But as I was looking for those videos about California's Channel Islands archeology, over on the right I saw thumbnails of huge waves.  The Shark Park videos popped up and I watched the one embedded above.  But there were others.  Like this one.  And this one.  

So as a friend of many surfers, I'm sharing this video for anyone who hasn't heard about this insane spot.  One of the biggest, heaviest, gnarliest, most dangerous surfed waves in the world, is right here in Southern California, Shark Park.  And it's not The Wedge.  The west end of San Miguel Island, the westernmost of the northern Channel Islands, is about 45 miles southwest of Santa Barbara, and about 80 miles, almost straight west, of Santa Monica.  

We all know the sport of surfing came from Hawaii, but it was the Southern California surf culture of the 1960's, about 55 years ago, that took the idea of surfing worldwide, through surf music and corny "beach blanket" movies.  So it's cool to know that SoCal is now home to one of the biggest, heaviest, gnarliest surf spots anywhere, actually two, if you count Cortes Banks, which is due west of the California/Mexico border.  Only a few surfers are experienced and crazy enough to give Shark Park a go, and that's just the way it should be.  But for all the groms coming up out there, they'll know, out there, over the horizon from their local wave, there's one of the craziest surf spots on Earth.  Maybe someday they'll have what it takes to give it a try.