#9. Sean Collins
Sean Collins changed surfing forever. Without him, modern surf forecasting wouldn’t be where it is today, leaving thousands of would-be surfers in their homes, wondering what to do with themselves. Born in Pasadena in 1952, Collins began surfing in the ’60s and took a serious interest in how waves were made, where they came from, and more importantly, where they were going to be. A college dropout with no meteorological training, Collins was a testament to passion: his love for surfing pushed him to learn something that eventually changed his life and the lives of millions of others like him. According to The Encyclopedia of Surfing, he packaged data from ships, NOAA charts and satellite photos to build his own surf forecasts. Early ’80s Baja trips turned into somewhat of a science experiment, with Collins plugging a fax machine into his car battery and throwing a hundred-foot antenna wire out and collecting satellite images of the Pacific before choosing the beach he was heading to.
In 1984, word of his wave-predictions had spread, and he joined Surfline, a new company that, before the arrival of the Internet, allowed people to get rough surf forecasts over the phone. In 1987, he left Surfline and founded WaveTrak, a service that did essentially the same thing as Surfline. In the early ’90s, the two companies merged, and began their takeover of the surf-forecasting world, keeping the name they still have today. In 1995, Surfline moved to the Internet, a previously uncharted territory, and turned the corner to what the company looks like now. In 1998, he bought the operation outright, then sold it in 2000 to Swell.com, but maintained his position as lead-forecaster.
Collins’ forecasting opened doors to waves like Cortes Bank, a seamount a hundred miles off the coast of San Diego that changed big-wave surfing forever. When Sean Collins died in December of 2011, thousands of people honored his life and his contributions to surfing in a paddle-out at Huntington Beach.
