Unusual waves threaten swimmers?

[hambubba]

It's larger than the board width.

[Signora Del Drago]

Strange. Is that a periscope on the horizon about a fourth or fifth of the way from the right edge of the photo? Phony or real, it's pretty.

[Mr. Plow]

Several places are selling prints of this titled Reef Draining: http://www.artistsinprint.com/Surf%20&%20Surfing.htm

Teahupoo seems to be a famous surf spot in Tahiti.

This picture, also from Teahupoo shows the same kind of wall of water - but is probably just a very large wave breaking: http://www.tim-mckenna.com/image/new...ski01_xxxl.jpg

Some more useful comments here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinkertons/76296916/

The previous discussion: http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/u...9;t=000828;p=0

[TuFurg]

I'm pretty sure it's discussed here before but didn't see it in the archived topics. IIRC it was real and there was a second photo as well.

[UEL]

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g1...e/teahupoo.jpg

is a picture of the same wave a few seconds later.

It was discussed on the old board here:

http://msgboard.snopes.com/message/u...28.html#000000

but most of the linked photos are gone.

The reasons I believe this to be not real are the following:

I think I have seen another version of this picture where the bottom of the wave was land, not more water. Perhaps that was the one that was faked. In addition, the swimmers appear to be wanting to go to the right (from our point of view), whereas the wave, it appears, is actually breaking to the left, what would essentially be breaking backwards and towards the wave behind it. That would make no sense at all. Plus, I am no surfer but I would think that there would not be so many people, casually challenging monster warped waves like that in such close proximity to each other.

I don't know, but it looks of photoshop.

[Jenn]