MedSwells Surf 
Translations: English Español Catalan
Wave pools, surf schools working overtime, crowded line ups - the surf industry is on a path of growth and consumerism.
At the end of August, a 3rd annual european wooden surfboard meet took place in Spain (EWSM2019), at playa de Berria. The meet is a strictly non-commercial and non-competitive gathering of wood shapers, professionals and enthusiasts. Their boards, from performance shortboards to big wave guns, surf well, look great and are ecofriendlier than anything else available on the market. It was a weekend of surf, beers and stories. A meeting of sharing passion, knowledge and visions.
In this video a handful of wooden surfcraft makers, shapers, people that make your ultimate gliding toy, discuss what drives them to make boards, the challenges that lay ahead and how they plan to influence the future - your future of surfing.
Wooden board shapers, like many other shapers, create their boards because they love surfing. But also the pleasure of working with wood, touching the roots of surfing, creating a surfcraft with natural materials, and of course the beauty of wooden surfboards play a big role.
The world of surfing is changing, faster than ever. Nobody really know where it is going, but surely things will change and unfortunately not only for the better. There will be more people, more polution, and more overcrowded breaks.
These shapers work relentlessly and passionately on making their favorite past-time more sustainable and ecofriendly. Building boards that last, reducing the use of oil based and toxic materials, using wood as a fully recyclable material.
As a combined group these shapers have an incredible wealth of knowledge on how to build surfboards more clever and smarter. With the diversity in approaches and solutions that they arrive at, their willingness to truly experiment and challenge the surfboard world's status quo, wood shapers hold the key to counter the negatives of what lies ahead.