Such is the enormity of this typhoon, wind speeds are forecast to gust to 280km/h around the centre of Soulik as the pressure bottoms out at a phenomenal 915hPa this evening.

Call me skeptical but I'm always wary when people mix activism with leisure. It's a concept that surfers, who often travel to Less Developed Countries, have a special skill. How to allay First World Guilt while travelling to exotic yet poverty-stricken nations? Claim the surfing is good for the people or the environment, maybe even start a campaign about the plight of the locals, and then carry on unencumbered.

A new campaign is currently challenging the ethics of surf travel. Turning them on their head in fact.

The Roxy video is hardly a shock, it's simply another step in the path that surf companies and their sponsored riders have chosen to market women surfing. The video is, however, barefaced in its approach, making little pretense to surfing whilst lingering on the female form far longer than is necessary to promote a surfing contest.

In that sense it's a new low in the objectification of women, but to the surf companies it makes sound business sense. 

The most interesting, and also the best, characteristic regarding low pressure systems that form close to the coast are the wide range of winds available in a very short stretch of coastline. The following lesson is something to keep in mind the next time a similar sytem strikes.

For surfers, the promises of social media are finally coming true; it's democratising the game and bypassing the old gatekeepers of information. It's also presenting a dramatic new challenge: never mind us crusty old surfing editors looking to increase our readerships, the responsibility to protect secret spots now rests with everybody.

The following article was written by blindboy.

Surfing has experienced a 30 year long financial bonanza during which its main corporate sponsors managed, with a head start from Coca Cola, to convince a sizeable market that not only was surfing cool, but that board shorts and a t-shirt were a fashion statement. So miracles happen, but not often, and not forever. The writing is on the wall, as well as in the financial pages, that those days are over.

Unveiled to the public today Wavegarden is the first wavepool that, if I were looking for a distinguishing criteria, I'd expect surfers would pay money to ride. The complex is on a property near San Sebastian and provides simultaneous waves that peel down either side of the lagoon offering rides approximately 18-seconds long.

The Big Wave World Tour has its own unique set of challenges. For one, how do organisers appease sponsors who stump up money for a contest that doesn't run. Also, how viable is a circuit where interested parties can wait six months between contests only to have it called off.

Craig Griffin is a Melbourne-based film director. His latest work, which he finished mere hours before this interview took place, is a documentary on Wayne Lynch. Uncharted Waters: A Personal History of Wayne Lynch is a study of the enigmatic Victorian, once the greatest surfer of his generation and a person whose politics and opinions thrust him into the spotlight as Australia underwent sweeping social changes.