First look. There it is. Photo: Tim McKenna
The controversial new judges’ tower for the 2024 Olympic surfing competition at Teahupo’o is now standing. Drone footage shared by photographer Tim McKenna offered a first look of the new aluminum structure.
“The new tower is up,” McKenna wrote on social media.
Then he addressed the obvious issue(s) that made the new tower an international controversy. According to McKenna, the “coral suffered minimal damage after a channel was marked in the lagoon so the construction boats could access it easily. It will take some time to see if Ciguatera has drastically increased in certain fish living in that specific lagoon area.”
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The construction came with plenty of opposition in the past six months. Local groups first spoke out in 2023 hoping to sway Olympic organizers and claimed plans for the new tower were approved without ever conducting a sufficient environmental impact study. Opposing voices grew louder and plans for a scaled-down construction were presented. In December, a barge damaged the reef during a pre-construction test, and news of the boiling controversy went global.
“If there’s no solution in the end… we must call into question the survival of the surf contests at Teahupo’o,” President of French Polynesia, Moetai Brotherson said at the time.
Within weeks, The MEGA Lab, a team of scientists based in Hawaii who have been researching coral reef health at Teahupo’o, shared a statement advising against continuing construction.
“The dredging for the barge path and tower construction can potentially impact 2,500 square meters of the reef and it is still unknown how fringe damages may affect the surrounding reef ecosystem. If this were to occur, it could cause a direct financial impact of at least $1,300,000 USD by damaging the live reef habitat,” they warned. “We hope the International Olympic Committee, appropriate government officials and the greater international community can see how devastating this impact will be to not only the valuable coral reef habitat, but also the local community who depend on this reef for their livelihood and well being.”
The International Surfing Association, the governing body that oversees surfing’s qualification process for athletes, then declared they would not support constructing the aluminum tower and offered new proposals. The ISA proposal included two alternative options, ranging from building a judges’ tower on land with a reduced camera platform situated on the reef to a system of 100x zoom lenses with no cameras on the reef at all. The Olympic Organizing Committee announced the very next day it would be moving forward with construction but a temporary pause allowed them to revise their construction plan and schedule.
The new tower is a temporary structure just like the previous wooden tower used for WSL events at Teahpo’o. It will be taken down and reassembled between contests on top of the new pilings that were installed to support the aluminum structure there now. Only time will tell now how this will impact the iconic reef at Teahupo’o.
