The two directors of ASR, Dr Kerry Black and Dr Shaw Mead split up, though both went on to establish tropical surf resorts. Their great hope of coastal engineering deemed a failure, while all the energy in the room shifted to that other ersatz solution, wavepools. In 2011, Boscombe Reef was closed, while in 2012 ASR went into liquidation. They were nice men, they were ambitious, forward thinking and radical.” Speaking to Bournemouth Echo in 2019, Boscombe Councillor Jane Kelly said: “People have this idea that they were con men, but they weren’t. For various reasons, mostly covered here, the reef never worked and it left a black mark against both ASR and the artificial reef industry.īoscombe Reef under typical swell conditions
The list includes Narrowneck on the Gold Coast, designed by ASR but built by another company, primarily as coastal protection, but also as a surfing reef, and in this respect could be considered moderately successful in that waves now break where they never used to.īoscombe was the most notable one for ASR, a big budget (3.25 million pounds) reef happening on the international stage.
Opunake, New Zealand, a failed artificial surfing reef.īoscombe Surf Reef, England, a failed artificial surfing reef. Mount Maunganui, New Zealand, a failed artificial surfing reef. Kovalam, India, a failed artificial surfing reef. The website for Raised Water Research tracks all artificial surfing reefs and its history makes for dire reading for proponents of the technology: However, despite a rash of projects, none delivered on that promise. See Bali, or Hawaii, or the Gold Coast, for instances of regional economies built on the back of good waves. Flagging regional councils saw visions of Snapper Rocks appearing on their grim, marginal, and mostly closed-out beaches, and they bought into the concept that good waves attract surfers and that interest converts into dollars. ASR was a New Zealand company headed up by three surfers, two of whom, Dr Kerry Black and Dr Shaw Mead, met at the University of Waikato while Mead was doing his thesis studying the architecture of high performance surf breaks and their potential for replication.ĪSR sold a vision of surfonomics based on the ‘build it and they will come’ mold. And in turn that industry was dominated by one company, Amalgamated Solutions and Research - simply known as ASR. However, in the twenty years leading up to 2015 the field of fake waves - or artificially created waves, or engineered waves, choose your term - was dominated, not by wavepools, but by artificial reefs. So it's fair to say the industry is booming.
There’s also a publication dedicated solely to wavepools, and a global conference showcasing the ever-expanding technologies. Since then, wavepools have become an industry with ten pools currently operating around the world and almost fifty more in construction. Slater’s was the first pool that matched the promise of man-made perfection. This December will mark six years since Kelly Slater unveiled his wavepool to a public who sat agog as that first, faultless wave zippered towards the camera.