For centuries, mariners spun tales of gargantuan waves in the open ocean, annihilating walls of water measuring 100 feet high or taller. Until recently, these stories were dismissed: Waves that size would seem to violate the laws of linear physics. But over the past few decades, as a number of ships vanished and new evidence has emerged, oceanographers determined that we have underestimated how the seas behave at their most ferocious. One instance of proof came in February 2000, when a British research vessel was trapped in a vortex of mammoth waves in the North Sea—including several that topped 100 feet.
Journalist and author Susan Casey provides a look at these colossal, ship-swallowing rogue waves—noting that as scientists scramble to understand this phenomenon, others view the giant waves as the ultimate challenge. Casey recounts her years embedded with the extreme surfers who fly around the world trying to ride the ocean’s most formidable monsters, including the pioneer of extreme surfing, the legendary Laird Hamilton.
The exploits of Hamilton and his fellow surfers are juxtaposed against scientists’ efforts to understand the destructive powers of waves including the shocking Indonesian and Japanese tsunamis in 2004 and 2011 respectively, to an astonishing 1,740-foot wave that leveled part of the Alaskan coast in 1958.
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