National Geographic ADVENTURE

Jellyfish Invasions! Rip Tides! Shark Attacks! Six Beach Dangers (and How to Avoid Them)

Text by Christopher Percy Collier and Devon O’Neil

Illustration by Kate Miller

The lures of the beach are hard to resist come summer. But this season a raft of perils (Shark attacks! Riptides! Jellyfish invasions!) seems poised to storm the coast and shift the action from surfing and sea kayaking to chicken fights and Marco Polo at the community pool. Last year, in fact, saw more than 25,000 beach closings or swimming advisories—a 28 percent increase from 2006, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. What’s more alarming is that an estimated seven million people get sick every year after visiting the nation’s 3,500 beaches. But that’s no reason to forsake the sand. Here, what the experts say is lurking out there--and what you can do to maximize your time in the sun.

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The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Gear Review: Hobie ATR Standup Paddleboard

Text by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro
Photo by Joshua Scott

Five years ago the only guys who knew what “stand-up paddleboarding” meant were pro surfers like Laird Hamilton and Dave Kalama. Since then the sport has invaded beach scenes from coast to coast, attracting converts from outside the surfing world. Fitness fanatics have latched on to stand-up’s full-body workout—you stand facing forward, feet shoulder-width apart, and paddle canoe-style—while hydro-explorers have started using the boards to access hard-to-reach shorelines. The first time I tried it, I enjoyed tooling around my Southern California harbor, but the excitement wasn’t worth the hassle of schlepping an unwieldy, 30-plus-pound beast.

Now comes the Hobie ATR ($1,350). Using molded construction similar to windsurf rigs, the board weighs as little as 22 pounds. For carrying, there’s an inset handhold in the middle: easy peasy. I grabbed it with one arm, zipped across the sand, and in seconds the ATR was blasting through the water as if motorized. If you have decent balance, stability on mellow H2O should be no problem, thanks to the ATR’s lengthy, 11-foot deck (stand-up paddle surfing takes a bit more practice). Give it ten minutes—plus or minus a fall or two—and you’ll be walking on water your very first day.

We're also big fans of the Werner Spanker Paddle ($339; pictured).

The Best New Surf Movie Not About Surfing

Text by Assistant Editor Ryan Bradley
Photograph courtesy Magnolia Pictures

Surfwise is not a documentary film about surfing. For this reason, it’s the best movie about surfing to come out in a good long while. Confused? Fair enough. Let me try to explain.

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The Adventure Life with Steve CasimiroSurf and Ye Shall Be Asked: The Curiously Interrogative World of Gabe Sullivan

Text by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro. Photographs by Sierra Sullivan, Tom Servais (top, bottom)

Flipping through Surfer Magazine goes something like this: blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, shocking lime green, blue, blue, blue.

There in each issue, jumping out from Surfer’s sea of epic waves and countless board short ads, is a rusty but glowing, chartreuse 1972 VW camper van, the icon and motorized doppleganger of Curious Gabe, Gabe Sullivan, who, every month, poses to ten complete strangers the kind of existential questions you’d expect to be asked in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly or in a dorm room at 1 a.m. Questions like, Does surfing improve with age? Would you rather be an East- or West-Coast surfer? And, a real brain scrambler, What’s worse—being a hoser or a poser?

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