Kelly Slater Steals Intellectual Property Of Great White Shark, Puts Into A Twin Fin

Shapers often credit nature for design inspiration. Makes sense. They’ve been shaping (by the forces of evolution) for hundreds of millions of years. Longer than Dick Brewer, George Greenough and Owl Chapman combined. 

Greg Webber has a handful of models named after their corresponding animal muses. After unveiling his Manta Ray surfboard he challenged the Walters brothers to surf, Greg told Stab, “The manta-ray inspired wing-tip is much more exciting because you’re incorporating the whole surface into something that is like a fin. But, and it’s a big but, is that the fucken thing (manta ray) moves. We’re kinda trying to achieve something that’s got stability like a shark or a dolphin dorsal fin but with the dynamism of a manta ray.” 

Indeed, the lexicon of many foam mowers (not just Greg) and veterinarians shows considerable overlap: fish, swallows, wings, fangtails etc. Check out the Electric Acid Surfboard Test with Shaun Manners to see some nature-inspired designs e.g. The Ryan Lovelace Rabbit’s foot pushed to the limits.

Stab writer, Woz pundit and ornithophile Paul Evans expressed his deep adoration of birding – surfing’s most complimentary hobby – as follows: “Birds by land, birds by sea. All around us. Beautiful, heroic, clever, mysterious, adventurous, the direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs. Blessed with the superpower of flight, god-like, revered by the ancients. The fastest creatures in the universe, they can fly at 320km/h, cover 12,000km non-stop, dive, swim, run, climb, cross vast oceans, deserts and mountains, migrate across the planet at will, following the sun, stars, winds and magnetic fields. They can eat, sleep and reproduce in mid air, you can bird whilst you surf, before and after. You can anticipate, track and stalk them… and yet nobody dies.”

All that is to say, the appreciation of fauna and foam wiggling are at least semi-correllated. 

Kelly Slater is the latest to take the IP of a marine creature and incorporate it into a board – The Great White Twin from Slater Designs.

“It’s call the Great White because the outline is literally the template of a Great White shark,” Slater shared on Firewire’s new podcast.

Collaborating with shaper Mike Woo, Slater explained, “I just thought it would be a fun, goofy idea and that maybe it would work. We made this one and straight away the board was unbelievable, I didn’t want to ride anything else.”

Want to feel like an Apex predator? Cop one here.