And globally which female surfers are impressing you?

Bianca Buitendag is my biggest role model. We met on a boat trip in the Mentawais a couple of years back and then I went to stay with her at her home in South Africa the following year and had the sickest time. She has incredible flow and links some ridiculous turns together, but she also just loves every minute of what she does. I’d like to do some other trips with her for sure. Other girls I love to watch surfing are Coco Ho, Malia Manuel and Lakey Peterson.

The judging pro female surfers on their looks side of surfing seems to be pretty big still, where do you stand on that?

I think it’s a real shame that surfing is still such a male-dominated sport in the year of 2014. The sad fact is though that because there is so little money in the sport now, the sponsors are asking the athletes to portray an image within social media etc that is going to be appealing to the majority of people who are buying the brand. Although it’s a lot better for the sport if the girls who rip are seen to be surfing well and being professional athletes, that’s not good enough for the brand because they would be getting a lot more attention/money if the girls were posing on the beach in their bikinis.

I think it has got a lot better now because at least the girls who are making money from the modelling side of surfing, they surf good too. I think the worst thing for the sport is when girls are calling themselves professional surfers when they can’t really surf but they just look nice in a bikini with their ass out. This is pretty degrading to the likes of the girls on tour I think and it also makes it difficult to justify surfing being a real occupation!

Any other issues in surfing you’d like to chat about?

I know there has been a lot of controversy about the new image of the ASP and its website/streaming of events but I think it’s sick! I really like how the events are being run and covered online like real international sporting events, it’s the kind of thing you could see on the sports channel on tv and I think a lot more people will get into watching the live streaming now even if they don’t know much about surfing. I think the commentary could be a bit more old school and fun though, sometimes I think I’m watching an American Football game or something haha!

And lastly what’s the raddest thing about surfing?

The raddest thing about surfing is that it can be my biggest passion in life but also my job at the same time. It takes me all over the world in search of new and uncrowded waves in amazing countries where I can meet so many incredible people, a lot of them share the same passion as me. The second raddest thing is that I can make people grin ear to ear by teaching them surfing and that’s priceless!

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