Development is often seen as the biggest threat to the
world’s surf spots, but a quick headcount suggests
human meddling has created more waves than it has
destroyed. So far.WORDS BY WILL BENDIXHAPPY
I
n 1963, in a small coastal town in
South Africa, a 28-year-old harbour
employee by the name of Aubrey
Kruger came up with the ultimate
tool for creating artificial waves.
Kruger didn’t surf. Instead, he was
a draughtsman at the port of East
London, tasked with designing a
more efficient structure that would
be able to withstand the heavy swells
that routinely battered the harbour
breakwater.
Puzzling over the idea while at home,
Kruger chopped a broomstick into three
pieces, which he then nailed together into
the shape of an H, with one leg twisted
sideways. Mrs Kruger was reportedly
unimpressed, but the design would
become a breakthrough in engineering
circles. When stacked together, the
interlocking blocks created a porous wall
that dissipated and deflected the energy of
breaking waves, instead of simply blocking
it. The new, more robust structures also
proved highly effective at trapping sand to
prevent erosion.
Kruger’s design, named the dolos, wouldbe replicated around the world in various
forms, and today you can find dolosse
everywhere from Queensland to Costa
Rica. Dolosse are, of course, not the first
building blocks used to fortify coastlines.
This has been happening for centuries,
using everything from rubble mounds to
massive chunks of quarried rock, but the
unintended consequence has often been
the same: the creation of new waves.
“The structures most likely to enhance
surf are groynes, breakwaters and training
walls,” says James Carley, Principal
Coastal Engineer at UNSW Sydney’s Water
Research Laboratory. When it comes to
waves, artificial or real, Carley knows his
stuff. A lifelong surfer, his great gramps
was also one of the first lifesavers and
bodysurfers at Manly in the early 1900s.
According to Carley, every site has a
unique combination of variables which
gives these artificially-induced waves their
shape and form, including the angle of
the coast to the dominant swell direction;
offshore features such as mounds and
shoals; sand supply and tidal range; right
down to the size of the actual sand grains.ACCI
DENTS