{"id":355711,"date":"2025-12-18T08:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T08:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/355711\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T08:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T08:16:09","slug":"australian-surf-crew-captures-a-real-life-ocean-glitch-that-repeats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/355711\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Surf Crew Captures a Real-Life Ocean ‘Glitch’ That Repeats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia is home to some of the world\u2019s strangest marine life, especially along its coasts and reefs. That said, much of its coastline isn\u2019t all that unusual. There are always exceptions, of course, like this bizarre coastal sweet spot where conditions line up to produce a dramatic\u2014and splashy\u2014display.<\/p>\n

First, the water spirals into a vortex, creating a circular view into the bottom of the sea. Then, the waves keep swirling until they break into a 130-foot (40-meter) pillar of saltwater. What\u2019s perhaps most surprising is that this isn\u2019t a one-time occurrence\u2014it\u2019s a recurring feature of a secret location somewhere off the Australian coast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe craziest wave on Earth\u201d <\/p>\n

These unlikely currents were captured by Chris White and Ben Allen, two members of an indie film crew based in Australia. Their claim to fame is Tension, a series of boogie-boarding movies that allegedly became \u201ccult classics on the fringe and occasional public menaces,\u201d according to Stab Mag<\/a>.<\/p>\n

White first captured<\/a> this phenomenon nearly a decade ago during an ocean outing. The strange geometry of the waves stuck with him for a long time, and he decided to seek it out again while filming for the 11th installment of the Tension series. And there it was\u2014the same pattern from nine years ago, repeatedly crashing and rising.<\/p>\n

For safety reasons, they haven\u2019t disclosed the exact location of this vortex. But a short documentary on the crew\u2019s encounter with the waves is available here (as a heads-up, the clip includes some profanity):<\/p>\n

\u201cI think if you go down, it\u2019s certain death,\u201d White admitted to Stab Mag. \u201cIt\u2019s funny, we just hopped off the phone with a wave engineer and he had no clue how it works. The rock shelf is stationary, it\u2019s not going up and down, so how does it break on all sides at once, like a plunger?\u201d<\/p>\n

Too strange to be true\u2014or scientific? <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not unheard of for nature to produce some off-putting waves, winds, etc., for reasons ranging from local geology to random tricks of the weather. But in such cases, more often than not, these are singular happenings that humans were lucky to observe at the right time.<\/p>\n

That was also what Arnold Van Rooijen, an expert in wave dynamics at the University of Western Australia, told the crew when they showed him the footage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a pretty unique combination of the geomorphology of the reefs and the symmetry of the water depths,\u201d Van Rooijen said. According to Ben Allen, the crew\u2019s drone operator, Van Rooijen had expressed skepticism that the phenomenon would happen again.<\/p>\n

\"Wave\u00a9 Tension Movies\/Screenshot by Gizmodo <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019m like, \u2018No, I\u2019m pretty sure we captured it happening over and over and over again,\u201d Allen laughed. \u201cHe just didn\u2019t believe it\u2014and he\u2019s meant to be one of the best oceanographers in Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve shot a lot of waves, explored, looked [at waves] so many hours in my entire life, and I\u2019ve never seen anything remotely close to that,\u201d White added. \u201cLike, it\u2019s just a spectacle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia is home to some of the world\u2019s strangest marine life, especially along its coasts and reefs. That…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[68294,74,36845],"class_list":["post-355711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-oceanography","tag-technology","tag-waves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}