Kolohe Andino and Evan Geiselman, Aeropuerto de Tenerife Norte

Monday, September 20, 10.45am: Y’sure do hear a lot of unkind things about young professional surfers. The essential complaint is that they don’t appreciate the gift of their profession and that any hardship thrown to test ’em will only result in tantrum. But, here, three hundred kilometres off the coast of Western Sahara, on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, we see new arrivals Kolohe Andino, 16, from San Clemente, Evan Geiselman, 18, from Florida, and Julian Wilson, 22, from Coolum, breeze into town. Just look! (But, not at Julian, he’s out of frame.) After three flights (LA-Chicago-Madrid-Tenerife) and an excess baggage charge of $US1500 for a Stab surf trip in a wavepool (with a twist), they sizzle with enthusiasm, even fear.

“A rail? In a pool?” says Kolohe. “Oh my god, somebody’s going to get hurt trying to grind that!” Just wait til y’see the thing, y’devil. It’s a stainless steel, 200kg monster that took metalworker Antonio a weekend – and a fistful of cash – to build in his mountaintop shed.

What Kolohe doesn’t know is we’ve also had a giant gas ring built and smuggled through customs in a series of boardbags (the ring’s going to be lit on fire and then surfed either through or near) and a 10-metre-high scrim that’ll be hit by massive cinema HMI lights, capturing every nuance of every grab (mute! slob! indy! stalefish!) in silhouette. It’s been six years since Stab drew the world back into wavepool shoots when Taj Burrow, Joel Parkinson and Trent Munro showed how progressive surfing could be applied to chlorine at Sunway Lagoon wavepool in Malaysia. This year, Hurley, Rip Curl and Insight have all used pools. We figured, we kicked something off, let’s see how far we can take it.

There are many factors at play in this photo shoot. Thieves have already made off with an essential part of the ring of fire (while your Stab correspondents were enjoying an excellent beach party at a wave fiercely policed by locals), and they helped ’emselves to a couple of doozy sleds and tripods belonging to Kai Neville (shooting here for Lost Atlas, the sequel to Modern Collective) and Richard Freeman (a Sydney-based fashion photographer and master of external lighting). Combine this with an island that don’t touch credit cards while holding out paws for sums of money equivalent to a year’s wage, and you’ve got some major speed bumps.

Whatevs, in two hours, the shoot starts and continues after dark on Tuesday and Wednesday. Apart from EG, Kolohe and Julian, you’ll also find Bruce Irons and Adam Melling in the pool. The photos will appear in the November issue of Stab and in our hard-cover annual out in December. -Derek Rielly