The world's biggest wave, explained

And how it’s transformed a Portuguese town.

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Nazaré, Portugal was for centuries just a small fishing village known for its fishermen and dangerous seas. Then one day in 2011, a pro-surfer named Garrett McNamara strapped on a surf board and rode a 78 foot wave right off its coast. It was a new world-record for big wave surfing and the moment that changed Nazaré forever. Now, Nazaré is the capital of Big Wave surfing. The secret to Nazaré’s giant waves lies under the surface, where a huge underwater canyon funnels swells right up to its cliffs, then launches that energy straight up, sometimes 60, 70, or 80 feet. Many surfers visit in the hopes of catching a 100-foot wave.

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Comments

Vox says:

14th May 2022 at 1:37 pm

Hey everyone, Sam here saying thanks so much for watching. This was a big project for us, but there’s a lot more to this story. As Tony told us, every surfer in Nazaré is hunting for one thing: the 100 foot wave. The “official” record is 80-feet, as certified by Guinness. But there have been several surfers that have ridden waves that appear to be around 100 feet — and they are backed up by experts.

Tony’s 2020 wave was measured by scientists at the University of Lisbon, who concluded it was 101.4 feet tall. The problem is… measuring waves is really, really, hard and there’s more than one way to do it. Here’s a great article about how it's done: https://news.usc.edu/179187/biggest-wave-surfed-2020-usc-adam-fincham-maya-gabeira/