Sunlight beats down upon the waves, palm trees rustle in the light offshore breeze, and a hut on the beach pleads for you to come in and crack open a Bintang. The water here feels hotter than you want it to be; you feel like you’re sweating. The University of Wollongong’s Surf Flex Lab team is hard at work. Apparently. They’re in Indonesia conducting research and testing new designs for surfboard fins. They’re here thanks to the Global Challenges Program run by UOW.
This is a rare opportunity for academics, being able to go on a paid overseas trip doing what they love. It’s hard enough for professional academics to get by, so this is a welcome opportunity for Marc In Het Panuis, the man directing the research trip, and the rest of his team.
This trip, which the team took in 2018, was what attracted me as a surf journalist to speak with Marc about his work: the idea of going to a world-class surf resort for “work”? It sounded like something reserved for the top 0.1% of professional surfers. The rest of us are forced to save every penny for months, lining up our leave days with the rest of the crew we’re travelling with, whilst praying that we get some decent waves.
But for Marc, whilst he is an avid surfer, the beach is not just a playground for him like it is for you or me.
“Every technology that we have is tested by me. I’m not a very good surfer, but I surf probably every day, and I’ll ride a variety (of boards),” he said.
Every surf session, Marc will venture out with sensors on his board and a prototype from the lab. “I can’t go surfing normally, I will be doing something, I either have asymmetric fins, I have different fin setups, I have different boards, I will have sensors, I will have 3D printed fins: it’s always in the back of my mind, I’m doing something in terms of research.”
Starting this research “ruined my hobby” he says.
Established in 2015, the lab has evolved to become a place of innovation and research, collaborating with everyone from small-time shapers to one of the world’s largest surfboard fin companies, as well as other universities. Marc describes it as “a purpose-built and dedicated facility for testing water sports equipment.”
The image of an all-white coloured lab, with scientists running around in lab coats and safety glasses isn’t exactly synonymous with surfing, but it is becoming more and more relevant in the sport, as professional surfers have evolved from globetrotting party-goers who surfed a heat or two on the side, to serious athletes.
Throughout the course of our interview, I found it hard to steer Marc towards answering the questions I had intended to ask for the interview. We kept going off on tangents, talking about our favourite local spots, what our quivers are looking like, and the swell forecast. You could mistake the conversation for one you might have in the carpark with the surfer next to you after a successful session. But then 3D printed fins and foldable surfboards worked their way into the conversation, and looking around his office and seeing piles of papers and fins strewn across the desk, I remembered I was speaking with a pioneer of the mechanical side of surfing.
Marc’s passion for his project comes through when you talk to him as he describes technical aspects, like “cavitation”, and “low density blanks”. But how can the average surfer relate to this ultra-technical investigation into what is stereotypically seen as a hobby for drugged up hippies (although this stereotype has shifted a bit in recent years thanks to the WSL and Olympics).
Tom Papin, a nutrition and dietetics student at UOW who started surfing consistently at the end of 2023, said he understands the difference a surfboard length or volume makes, “but things like fins, and tweaks in the method of board-shaping, are harder to recognise” he said.
This is the case for many surfers, me included. I tend to just hop on a board and if it feels good, I’ll keep riding it; if not, I’ll ride something else.
So how does Marc and his team’s research fit into the life of the everyday surfer? More than you might think. Dylan Perese’s invention, the Leash Bar, eliminates one of surfing’s more annoying accessories, and before it became exclusive to DP Surfboards and JS Industries, it was tested and prototyped at the Surf Flex Lab.
The team are currently working alongside UNSW and FCS in a project that aims to create a travel board for surfers. “The key in all of this is travel boards aren’t new, they’ve been around since the 60s. Just making them better, just as good as a normal board, I feel is the most challenging thing. Or even better,” Marc said.
Most surfers will know that snapping a surfboard is the end of its life. Both halves of the board are now condemned to the surfboard graveyard, otherwise known as the red bin in the carpark. So, to purposely have a board that is designed to travel in two pieces and be put together at your destination is likely to be a tall order.
The same goes for the use of sustainable materials in the surfboard manufacturing process.
“I started talking to some of the local shapers about sustainability and surfboards and what they said, one of these shapers said to me, he said, ‘I will switch my entire factory over to sustainable materials when somebody can develop a board that has the same, if not better performance.’”
UOW Team Professor Marc in het Panhuis with Professor Julie Steele.
A team of students and academics from the University of Wollongong (UOW) travel to the remote Mentawai Islands located off West Sumatra in Indonesia.
But there’s only so much work one lab can do, and these sorts of research projects require significant funding and manpower to undertake. “We have a lot of projects that we want to get funded that we can’t get funded. And we have projects that we got funded and we’re really lucky with that,” Marc said.
“So, if I don’t have research funding, then a way sometimes to move projects forward is to use students, so honours students; PhD students if you have PhD students, you usually get a little bit of funding, but if you really want to drive something forward, you need to have a lot of dollars behind you.”
This part of the interview made me regret choosing journalism as my topic of study. Working in a dedicated surf engineering research lab? Sounds like a dream!
“You know, the usual thing, my approach is if people want to come for an hour, if they want to come for an afternoon, if they want to come for a day, if they want to come for a semester, you know, everybody is welcome. I usually have, you know, I’ve had, I currently have three French interns, I have a couple of students from engineering. I had interns from the UK.”
Marc’s operation at the Innovation Campus is the perfect example of mixing work with play, something that I’m sure many out there hope to do one day, because to be passionate about your work isn’t work at all, or so they say.
For now, I’ll sleep dreaming of 3D printed fins and foldable surfboards, whilst Marc and his team continue to innovate and experiment, pushing the barriers of surfing as a science.