Loose lips sink ships...

A dilemma indeed. I've always been inclined to keep places quiet, although for the places I stumbled on, most are well exposed now. One example was Balangan in May 1976 - found it looking for Padang Padang which had been publicized the year before (in Tubular Swells I think). I seem to remember there'd also been a b&w photo of Balangan from under the wave rock in Tracks before then, but with location unidentified. Anyway, with a few friends staying in the same losmon Degel in Kuta, we surfed it that year to ourselves, sleeping in the cave there. We agreed to not say anything about the place, but of course the word got out after a while, or other surfers may have stumbled on by land or jukung heading for Ulus. Also stumbled on the Umdumbi River mouth and point while hitching through the Transkei in southern Africa in 1978 - a great, if sharky, setup - there was nothing there back then but there's a surf camp there these days. Other side of the coin - word of mouth in Bali on Nias got me there in April 1978, but it was about to be exposed, first in Surfer and then in Tracks mag. Back then there were a lot less surfers, no social media, and back blocks travel was a hard slog - nothing like the FIFO fully catered surf camps and boat trips of today. Part of me wishes it had stayed as it was in the '70s, but that was never going to happen as entrepreneurial surf biz went gang-busters. No doubt those who first surfed other parts of Indo, NW Aus and many other places have similar stories

I can't help but think that the kind of people who feel the need to broadcast to whoever will listen a perfect wave going off, devoid of crowds, are fundamentally insecure and lacking the confidence to experience the world - even for a fleeting moment - alone. To any real surfer, the phone is the last thing that would come to mind when presented with something so wonderful. Instead, they'd be frantically waxing up and paddling out. What is it with kids these days?!?!

Take it to your grave, or theirs.

My mates idea of a secret is telling one person at a time.

Funny breed us surfers. Shut the F up. That photog should be flogged. I just hate hearing someone on the phone as I am walking across the road telling their mate its pumping and get down. Was up Surfers way on the weekend. Pumping and sizey but not a punter within kms of me and plenty of peaks I could see. After a few bombs - guess what. They all start to paddle out where I am instead of going to one of the other peaks - f'n useless selfish C#s. Man if I found that wave described in that article I would try to buy the land in front and rights to the break, build a home and tell 0

Keeping secrets, throwing off and outright bullshitting comes naturally to me after years in the fishing game.
Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies.

Anyone else google those lat and longs?
Couldn't help meself :)

Of course. Fkn idiots! Im already on skyscanner checking out flights to bombay. Hopefully not too many locals

No dilemma. Total silence.

About 15 years ago I was on a trip in PNG. Me and a mate travelling on our own via PMV, to look for waves in a reasonably remote part of the country. We wound up in a small village with a great wave out the front, with plans to surf for a few days and keep moving. It was so fun we stayed for the rest of the trip.

This place does get the odd surfer passing through, and about 8 years before someone had given the chief's son a board. It was beaten up but of course, he ripped. We surfed with this fella the whole time and had an awesome trip, even heading to a couple of nearby waves he reckoned hadn't been surfed before. I chose to believe him on that :-)

Anyway, on the last morning we were waiting for the PMV to start the journey home and the chief of the village was waiting with us and told us to tell people about how much fun we'd had and how beautiful it was etc. A few minutes later he wandered off so we asked his son....do you want us to tell people so that more surfers come here? The reply was an immediate "no!"

I reckon we should all relate to that, and respect it! So I've hardly told anyone about it and it feels off to even write this vague story online.

I've also never had the chance to get back there so hopefully it's still off the radar for our old mate.

Plenty of uncrowded wave out there if you can get your head around not being on top of the food chain.

Become the owner of the newly discovered waves Surf Resort . Derr !!!

Great piece, but not a dilemma as others have pointed out.
You simply don’t say a thing.
The only dilemma I’m feeling is managing the urge to rip the blabbermouth’s head off.
Must be a generational thing. Maybe the dividing line is those who were born without a smartphone in their hands or a Facebook feed to embed the dopamine addiction to likes.
Here’s a little advice - the hit of revealing a secret spot is fleeting - and no one will respect you in the end, because they’d be looking through you, and out to the endless pits.

That's something I can totally relate to. Raglan is known for its points but there are world class sand set ups on the beaches too in the right conditions. So important to not let the cat out of the bag when you find a good bank either north or south. I've got a couple of mates that i won't take on my boat anymore. Couldn't stay quiet and it was crowded the very next day. It's a small world with social media. Post a picture if you must but never say where

So where's this spot then.. asking for a few friends who surf right foot forward..

"After an epic day of waves, it's always fun to relish in the hype. I try to use that as my only excuse to scroll through the social media feeds and catch up on swell events. That afternoon, doom scrolling away, I saw a handful of amazing clips from the day but devastatingly came across a couple of live feeds of people publicly sharing footage of that local bank, plus one particular post that had me seething. A video of a lucky bastard getting spat out of a nug, posted by an out-of-town surf photographer, who even went and named the location of the wave. Behaviour that's apparently no longer considered a cardinal sin..? "

Is this what it's like to have Facey or Insta?

"Behaviour that's apparently no longer considered a cardinal sin..? "
Same with dropping in. As a grom looking up the inside thinking there's no way old mate will make it but still not daring to take-off, just in case.
Now it seems there is no shame and no fear of burning someone. I see it almost every surf and new learner/intermediates are learning this is normal surf culture. Just like the social media boasts, is it a Gen z "its all about me" thing or just naive?

I’d also like to point out the related infuriating phenomenon of big groups of “surfers”. Since COVID the size of the groups people go surfing in has ballooned to ridiculous proportions. A few years ago you’d rarely see more than a couple of mates going for a wave together, maybe 3 max. I regularly see groups of 6 or 7 blokes going for a wave together now, like it’s some kind of team sport. They’ll blindly paddle out to a bank which already has a half a dozen surfers on it and completely destroy the experience for everyone, including themselves. I don’t get it, particularly when there are empty peaks down the beach, which the rest of us reluctantly have to vacate to, only for the cycle to continue with the next squad of ignoramuses. Maybe it’s the social media age, everyone’s in group chats and can easily rouse up half a football team to destroy a lineup?

Not sure if this whole ‘post COVID’ thing is real…..crowds have always been a thing.
Group chats are probably the worst thing IMO.
That all being said, I never surf with more than a handful of people. There’s no need, paddle down the beach. Zig, zag and care less about ‘quality’.
Oh, and avoid points and reliable reefs.

Well I think surf cams are a massive contributing factor to crowds and the fact most humans are morons.....was the surf pumping if it wasn't on social media?

Used to be your "mate" who works in a surf shop.......never tell them about that newly formed sand bank around the next cove.
Now they put it on the shop's Insta.

Does my head in when I ride my bike to my local (definitely not a secret) in the morning, and a bloke is there with his phone giving a run down to his mates.
Happens way to often.
Then a group of new faces....

I think these problems only relate to crowded places. On the gold coast you'd stumble across a good bank and the next day it would be chokkas. Now, there's frequently people texting to see where to surf and even when everyone congregates, it's still good vibes and fun times. Why? Because it's out of the way and crowds are reasonable.

The only caveat is when nice swells fall on the weekend or public holidays, like happened this Easter Saturday but you just eat the loss, let the touros go nuts and it's back to normal come the weekday.

Big Australia is being forced down our throat so these problems will only get worse.

Mobile phones were the first step in exposure to the masses before social media.
I remember looking onto shore from an isolated fickle reef and seeing multiple people calling their mates. Only saving grace was that by the time they had spent a few hours getting there the wind and tide had shifted and it was all over.

That was more than 20 years ago and now you can check the forecast for that particular point online. Laughable given it only breaks a few times a year.

It depends a lot on where you live,
Even crowded, world class waves can have uncrowded waves not far away,
And world class waves can be packed one day, and relatively uncrowded another day.
But somewhere like Sydney , where you’re more closed in , might be harder to escape.

I'd keep evidence of surfing it for naming rights in case someone decides to give it a dumb name like "bob's right" or some bullshit haha, otherwise I don't tell anyone anything anyway, people always fuck things up so I keep my cards close lol

Social media and message groups are the main downfall of flukey banks or under the radar scores. It might not even be surfers themselves, local community pages usually have lots of images of the surf if it's pumping and doing something it usually doesn't.

I've got a ton of images with revealing headlands or other giveaways but most never make socials and if they do, it'll be after the event so people can't correlate the swell and conditions to the current setup.

The urge to claim pumping, empty surf is hard to overcome but is par for the course in the current social media environment.

The first and most important step in secret keeping is not letting anyone know you have a secret.

I think there's nuance in the reasons that motivate people to tell people about banks and secret spots. Most of the time it is clout chasing, reactive moves for attention and authority, and in many cases attempts to somehow turn a secret little wave into something they can profit from.

On the other hand, if I know old mate has had a rough trot of late and that he doesn't work Tuesday and Wednesday and a neat little southerly and offshore winds are lining up for a bank on an island off an island off an island, then he might get a message saying "xxxx has good banks at the moment on the mid tide, enjoy but you didn't hear it from me". It's not me bragging that I scored it before him, or me simply broadcasting to the world and cheapening the experiencing for everyone else, but a gift from me to someone who will appreciate it for what it is. That said I am much more likely to part with such a secret after I've surfed it for a week and can see that the sand won't last much longer.

I think this is very different to exposing a spot entirely. A corner of perfect reef in an Indonesian village without a surf camp (god what a novelty in 2025) is something I'd not tell a soul about for the rest of my life.

Sharing surf conditions by mobile phones potentially reduces
driving time and greenhouse gas emissions,
from a non local’s perspective.

Happens all the time on the tweed coast
At the end on my street there is 6 kilometers of open beach, often it is one long gutter, but
the banks change all the time, and rarely stay good for long as are very dependent on swell direction
Last Friday was pretty good all day - as was most of the north coast, and mostly surfers from the neighborhood on it.
Saturday morning its offshore everywhere and 3 - 5ft everywhere
by 8am there were cars parked down the street and around the corner and 30+ out on one section. Yet no one 200 metres to the north or south

Most guys were parking, waxing up without even walking down to take a look!

What the hell is wrong with surfing alone?

So communication tools have improved - we are a long way from verbal-only communication, which then progressed (in some places) to written text and now, to ubiquitous hand-held devices with always-on social media applications and high-resolution satellite images covering the entire surface of the planet.

Still plenty of secrets out there, if you have the time, the energy, the inclination and most of all, the money to go out and find them.

Well, I’d tell one or both of two good surfing mates, if they were in the locale.
But these would be beach breaks that change like the weather, and knowing something is good today does not mean it will be good tomorrow.
Of recent times I have been regaled by crowds of 100’s at the Sydney local every day of the week, all day. Equally I’ve been up and down the coast and had to wrestle with the question of whether to go out on my own, knowing that there have been some sightings of large sharks in recent times. Neither position is overly appealing to me these days.
A few places I go to have recently sparked up after the big storm swells moved the sand around. The local boys know and we are all just grateful that the sand has lined up again.
As for posting to social media, damn man, get a life. Get off that shit and start living.

Really depends on location now, even margs region has enough surfers a new secluded bank will get crowded after a day, if your in a city or somewhere like Surfers or SoCal your screwed. Best strategy is to get off the beaten path, I see people joking about Mumbai but India has some unreal waves, especially some of the islands off the west coast. Angola, Cape Verde, Phillipines, Palau. All great surf but to get there is hard so they will stay uncrowded until access is improved.

I can't blame the young crew cause they've grown up with a total saturation of social media & they're on it all the time. I'm guessing if you're not in it you're a throw away & not validated. Posting very viewable content maybe becomes a badge of honor & lifting oneself into fig jam territory. Surfing has a lot of fig jams, I was one of them, maybe still a bit. In my salad days I couldn't contain myself, I'd be telling the world everything I wanted them to know, albeit when we'd congregate back at the pub. I'd venture to say early secret spots were passed on via super 8 film nights when one of your mates came back from a trip. After said movie had finished was the line "I've been instructed to not give away this location". After some follow up medicinal encouragement the to not sort of gave way

I hate lying to people when they ask me where I surfed the other day. But when it's a secret spot it's a necessary evil.
It helps if you're in a closed loop with the people you regularly surf with.

I am guilty of sharing a spot once to someone and a horde arrived next day .. tbh. Swore never again. Thankfully, around here the fickle nature of many secrets - still waves being found - mean they can’t get busy. The fickleness is the best cure for this malarkey.

Ran into a local surf reporter/contest frother at the supermarket once during a flat spell. He looked at my sunburned noggin and said, "you scored, didn't you?" I told him where I'd surfed down the coast mistakenly thinking he was core enough not to blab. Next morning he named the EXACT location during his morning surf report and the place was overrun in an hour and a half. Fuck head.

I think the dilemma is somewhat diluted if you surf mainly in the winter months below 40° South.

I remember a few FM radio surf reporters in the 90's that needed a major lesson in discretion, which they duly received.
Thankfully, most of them seem to keep it fairly vague these days.
We can blame the introduction of the mobile phone for their proliferation as well.

Apologies. I've got the weirdest internet connection this evening.

The human animal.
What a strange, peculiar and curious creature it is.
But pretty simply, at least 90% of people are born with Sheep Syndrome solidly engrained in their blood and their psyche.
Can't really think for themselves, fully explore their mind, or apply that to life and existence.
Surfers are no exception, as a collective.
Follow the leader, follow the trend, ride this, wear that, and..... find comfort in surfing around others.
Core surfers are different and don't fit the mould. But the mould doesn't really fit with changing modern times and technology either...
So whaddya do?
No magic solutions really. Can't get angry and piss & moan. Can't stop change.
Reminisce?
There's still gold out there if your willing.
And don't be a sheep.

what a brilliant piece, Matt. You nailed the heartbreak and the friction that every old-school surfer feels watching the soul of surfing slowly unravel in the digital age.

Back in the 1980s, localism was law, and remote surf trips were rites of passage. Travellers were fiercely tight-lipped, not out of ego but out of reverence. There were no Insta stories, no drone flyovers—just whispered directions, paper maps, and a kind of unspoken pact. You earned your waves. If you blew a secret spot, you didn’t just cop stink-eye—you were out. Period.

Even today, Hawaii still guards its secrets. Sure, the big name breaks are in every magazine and webcam feed, but talk to the uncles, the true keepers of the land and water, and you’ll find there are still hidden gems tucked behind lava fields and cane roads, protected not just by geography but by deep cultural respect.

These were (and still are) sacred spaces—not for clout or clicks, but for connection. Maybe the true surfer’s dilemma now is less about whether to tell your mates or post online—and more about whether you’re surfing for yourself or the approval of strangers.