ABOUT SEAN COLLINS & Surfline's California Surf Guide
Surfline's California Surf Guide: Secrets to Finding the Best Waves is a full-color, richly detailed 200-page book that provides all the tools to help you score on any swell -- from swell model graphics and optimal swell windows to high quality photographs and illustrations. No secret spots are revealed, but you'll learn the surf secrets for EVERY MILE of COAST in California. It will also help you understand how to use Surfline, surf forecasts, buoys, and other data so you can always be in the right place at the right time.
ABOUT SEAN:
The son of a navy navigator and a Southern California native, Sean Collins serves as founder, President and chief forecaster of Surfline. One of the most influential surfers in the surf industry, he is credited with having pioneered and created the first ongoing surf forecast available to the surfing public via Surfline and 976-SURF in 1985.
An avid sailor, long-time Harbour team rider, a standout surf competitor as a youth, Collins had no formal training in meterology beyond a few school courses. Collins' fascination early on with the mechanics of wave-producing storms led him to creating his own personal forecasts. He synthesized data from at-sea ships, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), weather charts, and satellite photos, including late-night weather faxes from New Zealand via a crude shortwave radio. Collins raided the National Weather Service library in Los Angeles, compared week-old weather charts to the surf behind his Seal Beach home and eventually devised his own formulas for making sense of it all. By the early '80s, he was adept at forecasting swells and shared the information with his friends.
Over the last 30 years, Collins has refined his sophisticated technique of wave forecasting, much of which is now being implemented into LOLA, Surfline's special automated worldwide surf forecasting tool using the NOAA Wavewatch III model. Today, Surfline is the leading provider of surf report and forecast information to consumers, businesses and government agencies worldwide via phone, fax, wireless web and the Internet. His expertise has also helped lead to the discovery of remote big-wave sites including Cortes Bank in Southern California. Additionally, he regularly consults with contest organizers, movie production companies, pro surfers, and the Coast Guard.
Sean's passion continues to be to explore new surf frontiers and to find new surf spots to research and surf, and to help others to enjoy great waves. (source: Surfline and Matt Warshaw's Encyclopedia of Surfing). | More Bio | Interview | Surfline Overview |
