Profile of a big wave

Homework:
1. Design a blog post on your blog of Maverick waves from different parts of the world. Be sure to describe the geography and the topography of the ocean floor in these areas and how this helps create these massive waves.

Big Wave - (Peahi), Jaws, Hawaii, United States



(Peahi), Jaws in the United Sates is located on the island of Maui in Hawaii. It is located on the northern side of the island (Maui) and sits at the bottom of rolling sugar cane fields.

The Surf break at Peahi, a large deep water reef is called "Jaws" due to its size, speed and ferociousness of the waves found there. The enormous waves at "Jaws" reach up to heights of 36.6m and up to 48.3km/h. These in the surfing world are known as monster waves. The large swell at Peahi only comes around a few times a year by open ocean swells formed in the Alaskan Aleutian islands and the Arctic. They are most common during the colder, Winter months of December and February. The swell travel thousands of kilometres of uninterrupted Pacific Ocean hitting the reef at Maui at 48km/h, almost 1 kilometre out from the Hawaiian coastline.



The reason why the waves are so big at Peahi is because of the reef offshore from the coastline. The reef and rocks at "Jaws" are shaped in a way that magnify incoming swell energy and produce clean and well-defined right and left directional waves with gigantic barrelling (air in the middle of the rolling wave) sections.



An example of wave at "Jaws"

Near the north shore of Maui is located a large underwater ridge. When the swell passes over the ridge, it slows the wave down (also known as refraction). The reef squeezes the wave in and up to form a cresting wave.

The inside of a barrelling wave at "Jaws"





Example of wave refraction at "Jaws" (Peahi)

Every year thousands of surfers flock to Peahi to tackle some of the worlds biggest and monstrous waves in the world found right in Maui, Hawaii.