Waterpeople Podcast Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich - surf stories & ocean adventures

The loudest human-made sounds: Nuclear Bomb (224 dB), Rocket launch (204 dB). And clocking in at 260 underwater decibels is the seismic blast, part of a process for exploring for oil and gas in the ocean. Unlike bombs and rockets, however, seismic blasts "fire approximately every 10 seconds around the clock for months at a time." For eight years, Marine Biologist Annie Ford worked onboard seismic blasting vessels, and felt the relentless explosions and reverberations from her bed at night. Sh...

Are you investing in yourself and your curiosities? At 63, Sally Parkin sold her home to spend the better part of 2023 surfing in Australia with her family. Sally is known for "single handedly" reviving the 100 year old tradition of English surfing on wooden bodyboards. She first surfed one at age 5, and decades later, when her family's quiver started to break, she realised there was only one local maker of traditional boards remaining. She founded The Original Surfboard Company t...

Injuries are mostly out of our control. But recovery offers many choices. Will we allow the scar tissue to stiffen or soften us? Stu Nettle is the editor of Swellnet, one of Australia's leading independent surf media and forecasting sites, where he has written about board design, surf industry happenings, surf science, and coastal geology since 2008. Stu is a lifelong surfer but late-comer to surf media. He “had many unrelated life chapters, business failures, social experiments, and sur...

Raised on a diet of deep ecology and the DIY spirit of her single mom, Pacha Light earned her first surfboard busking as a tween. She then forged her way into professional surfing as a teenager on Australia’s Gold Coast: signing a big endemic sponsor, training every day, and making a name for herself as a competitor and surf model. Until she couldn’t do it any longer. She felt she was not fully in alignment with her values. Still, along the way, Pacha found her storytelling voice, ...

Have you ever felt like something was wrong, but you weren't quite sure how to name it? Tyler Wilde is a teacher and bodysurfer from southern California. In 2017, Tyler won the prestigious International Surf Festival bodysurfing contest and was later voted into the Gillis Beach Bodysurfing Association as one of their youngest members. As a physical education teacher, his goal is to help his students "feel more embodied."Tyler went through a lengthy bout with depression and anxiety, and like m...

A little fire can keep you warm; a big fire can burn your house down. Two time ASP World Surfing Champion Tom Carroll speaks candidly about his struggles to harness the power that made him famous. From the highs of professional surfing to addiction and meditation, his large life is a study in harnessing and honing one's power in mind and body. Few surfers ever perform a wholly memorable maneuver . Tom broke down that norm in 1991 when he threw down a turn under the heaving lip of ...