Caught on video: 'The wave that shouldn't exist'
A team of Australian bodyboarding ratbags has managed to capture staggering footage of an extraordinary oceanic phenomenon: a place where four 12-ft (3.7-m) waves regularly converge into an oval dip, with explosive results.
You wouldn't want to be a fish in this particular neighborhood. There you'd be, minding your own business, swishing some tail, opening and closing your mouth, enjoying the simple things in life – and then an instant later you'd find yourself locking eyes with a seagull, having been launched more than 130 ft (40 m) into the air by a naturally-occurring water cannon of spectacular proportions.
A sequence of wild videos were captured by Chris White and "drone guy" Ben Allen, during filming for Tension 11, an independent boogie-boarding film released on YouTube. White had seen the wave before, and captured it in still images for his coffee table book, Dark Light.
"The very first time I laid eyes on it," says White, "I wasn't filming, I just had my still camera. We were exploring the waves and we just randomly ended up there. Got this photo of. At this point I thought it was just two waves hitting each other. Everywhere I posted it, people thought it was fake, because it looks like it's mirrored. And then it explodes. I've always been curious, does that happen every time the swell's big?"
If the ocean had a belly button. Tension MoviesIt seems the answer is yes. White returned to the spot more or less by memory, after deciding to revive his iconic Tension films, first released in 2000 on VHS tapes. Stab Mag's Ethan Davis describes the original films beautifully, as "scrappy, prank heavy documents of slab hunting and bad ideas that stitched hardcore bodyboarding together with a Jackass level disregard for consequences. They became cult classics on the fringe and occasional public menaces when the jokes escaped containment and landed on A Current Affair or Today Tonight, framed as evidence of Australia’s moral decline. Which, naturally, only made them funnier."
Little seems to have changed in that regard, bless their cotton socks; the Tension 11 trailer (NSFW) is brim-full of butts, farts, nude karate and crudely-sketched genitalia as well as death-defying wave riding. An accurate representation, in my experience, of the Australian adolescent experience at the time.
But the team also grabbed a stack of footage of this unique ocean phenomenon happening over and over again. And it's not two waves converging – in many cases it's actually two giant 12-footers colliding with another two smaller waves backwashing out from the shore, plunging simultaneously into a gap left by hydrodynamic forces over a reef close to the surface, causing a huge volume of water to rocket skyward as if a depth charge has gone off underneath the waves.
The team was lucky not to have their drone blasted out of the air as they filmed it. At this point, it's only fair to hand you over to White and Allen. Excuse the language; I don't think many of us would do much better under the circumstances. And if you're not a fan of some very Australian whoopin' and hollerin', best pop the sound off, because they do get a tad excited.
HOW WE FOUND THE CRAZIEST WAVE ON EARTHThe Tension team won't be revealing where they found it: "I wanna go back so bad," says White, "but at the same time, I don't wanna kill someone. It's scary to think what could happen." Both agree that some of their board-riding co-conspirators would likely find it hard to resist the idea of sitting over the dip, hoping to get launched skyward. But the plan is to return to the spot again for a future Tension 12 project.
Still, it's staggering footage of an extraordinary natural event, and I can't help but get swept up in the sheer joy of these two marvelous drongos as they recount the story. Godspeed, you mad bastards.
Tags
Loz leads the New Atlas team as Managing Director, after nearly two decades as one of our most versatile writers. He's also proven himself as a photographer, videographer, presenter, producer and podcast engineer. A graduate in Psychology, former business analyst and touring musician, he's covered just about everything for New Atlas, concentrating lately on clean energy, AI, humanoid robotics, decarbonization, next-gen aircraft, and the odd bit of music, motorcycles and automotive.
Most Viewed
Apollo laser takes down 200 drones unplugged 5,200 holes carved into a Peruvian mountain left by an ancient economy Toyota's tiny, barebones IKEA pickup could be its most versatile ever 10 commentsSign in to post a comment. Please keep comments to less than 150 words. No abusive material or spam will be published.
Nobody December 17, 2025 07:28 AMWaves come in all shapes and sizes. I've never seen ones quite like this but I have seen giant waves suddenly appear near my boat in the ocean and then disappear. It is a sight to behold. That giant waves occur in the ocean happens far more often than most people realize. When a lot of waves intersect from different directions the constructive and destructive interference can be spectacular for a moment and then they are gone. When I was younger we had a lake water skiing contest where i would run the ski boat in circles in calm water and tighten the radius several times forcing the wake to converge into the middle. I would then turn the ski boat and cut through the center while pulling a skier. The normally two foot waves would suddenly rise up to five or six feet. No skier ever made it across and a couple times we almost capsized the ski boat. After years of boating the Great Lakes and ocean, nothing would surprise me. The number of wave types must be nearly infinite.
Laszlo December 17, 2025 08:50 AMWonder if these spots of the explosive waves are geographically fixed (more or less), or they appear randomly scattered on a large territory?
asninsp December 17, 2025 01:40 PM Would have liked to watch this but your software wants me to sign in when I am already signed in uk_exile December 17, 2025 02:42 PM@Nobody using a boat to create wake convergences and hence a larger wake is called "Double Up". It's very common for wakeboarders to do this. Google it and you'll see some very impressive jump videos using the effect
Nobody December 17, 2025 03:37 PM@uk_exile I'm sure we didn't start the wave convergence idea but we did come up with it on our own 60 years ago on a small lake just from observation. This was long before we started vacationing on our small fly bridge cruiser across the whole Midwest from the Great Lakes to the Gulf and then out into the Atlantic. Our boat was our first camper when traveling across the country and our floating home when we came to an ocean marina. We had a power adapter and step ladder for the RV parks and a different one for the marinas. Of course this article is about unique waves and I guarantee we saw things you wouldn't believe. Being stranded at sea through a sudden severe storm and then being surrounded for about fifteen minutes by hundreds of blue lights in the water was one of the strangest. My 12 year old son said this must be what you see right after you die.
JS December 17, 2025 05:14 PM@asninsp - It's super annoying when that happens to me too . but it's not because of New Atlas - it's YouTube forcing that. It's simply an embedded video here, directly from YT. Even though I have YT premium and all that good stuff, I still get forced "to sign in" sometimes. When that happens and I REALLY wanted to see whatever the video is, I just refresh and instead of clicking play, I click the title of the video on the upper left, which opens up the YT site where I watch it direct (and then YT steals all my data. Haha!).
dave be December 17, 2025 07:49 PMIts not really magic waves, you can see theres a rock structure under there. The expert they talked to also mentioned the seafloor structures being present to help make this happen.
Gregg Eshelman December 17, 2025 08:51 PMI'd like to see someone go out there at a time when the tide and conditions aren't doing that, anchor some sensor buoys, then wait for the conditions to happen again. I bet the pressures are enormous when all the waves line up to pull that spot nearly down to the reef top then slam back in.
Lamar Havard December 19, 2025 06:16 PM Those dudes sound like Stan Laurel being chased Oliver Hardy! MQ December 29, 2025 03:02 PM Nice bommie break in crossing seas. Basically a real live single point wave pool. Saving comment.FREE NEWSLETTER
More than 60,000 highly-engaged subscribers receive our email newsletter. Get your daily dose of extraordinary ideas!