Long Read: The Life Of Mikala Jones

Editor’s note: Today marks one year since Mikala Jones’ tragic passing in Indonesia’s Mentawai Islands, where he died surfing a shallow reef pass due to a surfboard-related injury. In Mikala’s memory, we wanted to revisit this piece by Chris Binns, which celebrates Mikala’s life and his many contributions to surfing — perhaps the greatest of which was keeping dozens of world class waves a secret. We’ve also made this Premium piece free for all to enjoy.

Hall of fame tubehound, POV icon and North Shore royalty Mikala Jones passed away on Sunday, July 9, 2023, while surfing a little-known heaving righthander in Indonesia’s Mentawai Islands. 

He was 44. Our thoughts go out to Mikala’s extended family and army of friends across the seven seas. 

Mikala was born in Oahu on April 3, 1979. His father, John Jones, moved to Hawaii from California in his teens and met high school sweetheart Violet Sagon soon after. John is a passionate surfer, shaper and photographer, and upon graduating school he studied dentistry and became Doctor John. Violet, of Hawaiian and Filipino descent, was a nurse and track athlete.

After getting married the young couple took off to travel the world, before falling pregnant with their firstborn daughter, Malia, and returning to Hawaii. Mikala was the second of the couple’s three children together, with Daniel arriving five years later. John and Violet split when Mikala was eight, and John moved from Oahu’s east side to the North Shore, where he bought a house at Rocky Point that changed his children’s lives forever. Brother Keoni completed the Jones gang in 1991.

For Mikala and his siblings, already surfers, the waves of the North Shore were the silver lining to their parents’ separation. “My dad thought it would be a good move for us,” Mikala told Jed Smith on an Ain’t That Swell podcast recorded in 2022. “We weren’t outcast kids, but everyone would be heading to baseball and my dad would be like, ‘You’re not going to that game on Saturday, we’re going surfing!’ Or he’d pull me out of school and be like, ‘Let’s watch the Pipe Masters. I’ll shoot it and you can hang out.’ I still remember walking down the beach and seeing Derek Ho get spit out of a barrel and doing that claim that was in Surfers: The Movie. It was embedded in my mind, and I was eight years old.”

It wasn’t long before Mikala’s surfing started to gain attention, as he took off down the competition route, winning two national amateur titles along the way. “Anyone else would’ve been happy just to sit at home at Rocky Point,” says Mick Fanning. “But in the early days Mikala would come out to Australia and do training camps with guys like the Macdonald twins and Darren O’Rafferty, then hit the QS and try to qualify for the world tour.”

“We crossed over on Rip Curl in those early days,” says Mick, “and I think he probably found his love for travel doing Search trips around that era with Nathan Hedge and Chris Davidson, and Tom Curren and the A-team, exploring the world.”

“Mikala was the real deal Search individual,” says legendary photographer Ted Grambeau. “That opened up his eyes to what was out there. I don’t think his nature was contest-oriented really, he didn’t have that killer in him. He was simply a beautiful person and a beautiful surfer. He was a class act and it was all flow, like a Joel Parkinson or a Tom Curren. Mikala was a zen master with his surfing, his travels, his relationships with people. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anywhere that he hasn’t been welcomed with a beaming smile.”     

A man of contradictions, Mikala’s softly spoken nature could easily have seen him mistaken as being a little cool, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Mick says, “Before I really got to know him, I was like, is he mad at me or something? He’d just be so dry, wouldn’t laugh or anything. Then he’d come up with a one-liner and you’d see that he was laughing and just loves to gauge people’s reactions. He was classic.”

As Mikala was starting to spread his wings, back on the North Shore the Jones household was hosting surfers and photographers from all corners. “They used to open the house to all the Aussies. So many of them stayed there every North Shore season for their whole careers,” says Mick.

“It was a legendary pitstop,” says Ted, “Photographers in particular were always welcome because Mikala’s dad was into photography. It was this open house, an iconic little bastion in Hawaii, an embassy for everyone. And the family’s spirit really shone through in Mikala.”

With Mikala going from strength to strength in the water, growing up around cameras and photographers was rubbing off on how he approached the bigger picture pro surfing game too. “Mikala knew he was a professional surfer at a very early age,” says Ted, “and that back then you were only recognized for the images that were captured. He worked it out by surfing some of the higher profile places that were probably too sketchy for most other surfers.”

One of those higher profile places was Off The Wall. “It used to be uncrowded down there!” Mikala told Jed, “You could get a barrel with no one around and whether you make it or don’t make it, it was all fun to me. I’ve been surfing it since I was younger, and I’ve seen some crazy shit. Back in the day Off The Wall drew guys like Kahea Hart and Matt Archbold. Todd Chesser would paddle down. People would fear it.”

While Mikala was learning not to fear Off The Wall, he also learned that at the turn of the millennium there was a once-in-a-lifetime generation of water photographers keen to swim and shoot anyone brave enough to tackle the hallowed near-closeout. “Scott Aichner, Jeff Flindt, Dan Russo, Zak Noyle, I don’t think anyone’s getting shots like that anymore,” Mikala told Jed, “Or if they do you don’t see them! There were 10 of them, they were pushing the envelope of water photography, and it was pretty cool to be able to work with them and do that shit.”

With print still king, cover shots were gold for a pro surfer, and in the noughties there was nothing that earned more page ones than a big, blue fisheye tube. “If you had a cover in the early 2000s you’d get a sponsor and you were good for four or five years,” Mikala told Jed. “One, it’s gonna be a nuts wave. Two, it’s gonna be a nuts photo. And three, you’ve got the whole surfing world drawn to those magazines.” Mikala went to work and was soon landing covers everywhere, before hitting the road once again to try and find less crowded waves. Maybe even some that didn’t closeout.

Dr John had first taken his family to Indonesia when Mikala was just 13, and the family were regular visitors ever after. Mikala felt compelled to return. “He really came into his own in Indo,” says Ted, “He was seeking more powerful waves than what most travelling surfers were looking for. It elevated his status. He was like Superman, where he’d change from a mild mannered man into this absolute animal in pits!”

“Mikala had an Aloha spirit he took around the world. He’s probably more Hawaiian in that regard than anyone I know. He was always a giver of himself and so well respected by everyone as a result. Then he went on the exploration binge with a vengeance, and just loved the heavy, heavy waves that a lot of people would shy away from.”

“Mikala and I moved to Bali at similar times in the 2000s,” says Australian hellman Dylan Longbottom. “We were both on similar paths — we were chasing the biggest, craziest barrels we could find, and we ended up travelling together a lot. He was so easy to travel with but in the water he was such a beast. He made surfing heavy waves look easy.”

American photographer Nate Lawrence first met Mikala in Taipei airport, en route to Indonesia. “As a young photographer Mikala was the cream of the crop of the guys I wanted to shoot with. I think he’d just got a cover of Surfer Magazine and I remember how much of a fan I was. I was starstruck, like, ‘Oh, this guy is one of the most stylish dudes and he’s a crazy good surfer and he’s been on covers and all this stuff.’ I was just so frothed out.”

While Nate and Mikala were heading to Bali in search of waves, they had something else in common. “We were both in love with Indonesia,” says Nate, “and we were both in love with women who lived in Indonesia. I was coming over to stay for the rest of the year, and he was doing the same thing, because he had met Emma and she lived there, so he was splitting his time between Hawaii and Bali.”

Originally from Western Australia, Emma Brereton has spent most of her life in Indonesia, working in fashion and running a clothing manufacturing business. As things got more serious, Emma and Mikala started to talk of settling down, and it took little convincing for Mikala to uproot from Hawaii and base himself in the once sleepy beachside village of Canggu, a dozen-years before there were more minimarts than rice paddies. The young couple married in 2003, and brought daughters Isabella and Violet into the world a short time after that.

Around this time Mikala’s Rip Curl contract was up for renewal, and his decision to move to Bali had not been welcomed by the brass. Forced to choose between matters of the head and those of the heart, Mikala left the Search, and kicked off the greatest exploratory surfing career of the modern era in the process. “Mikala was his own Search in the end,” laughs Ted. “He took things in house. He knew where his shots needed to go and who needed to see them. He was very intelligent in the way he went about it. He was a surfer of the hardest core but he was also one of the world’s best photographers and documentary makers, and he blended it all in a masterstroke, making the life he wanted to live.”

Mikala didn’t need long to find his feet in Bali. An early surf in Canggu or on the east coast would be followed by lunch at The Balcony with the local crew, trying to work out what was on for the afternoon. “He was pretty quick to get into the surf scene,” says Nate, “and become close to guys like Rizal Tanjung and Bol Adi Putra, Betet Merta and Marlon Gerber, Lee Wilson. He just seemed to be completely comfortable here.”

Courtesy of a new road the east coast of Bali had been thrown open, and Mikala was among the first to put in serious time on the black sand beaches and points that ribbon the shoreline at the base of Mount Agung. Not that he’d ever tell anyone. “I remember anytime I’d see Mikala in Bali I’d ask him where he was going,” says Mick, “and he’d always say, ‘Ah, I dunno, might go check out this place.’ We’d ask if we should come and he’d say, ‘Ahhh, I’d probably go here instead… lemme know how it is!’ It was pretty comical. But if you paddled out and saw Mikala you were stoked, because you knew you were in the right spot.”

“I really started to take notice of Mikala when he became the free surfer guy chasing tropical tubes” says fellow tropical tube aficionado Tai “Buddha” Graham. “You never saw the dude in a wetsuit. He was just always standing in big, big tubes with boardshorts on. I was like, that’s what I want to do! I just needed to find out what this guy was doing, and how he was doing it.” 

“We both lived in Bali, we both liked the same kind of waves — not having heaps of crowds, and going and having a little look around the corner. There was this natural gravitation to find someone who was up for the mission. Like, it could be pumping, it could not be pumping, but let’s just go and have a look anyway but we might have to get a flight. And another flight. And then get a car, and then get a boat. Oh, now we have to hire a ski! All that hard shit. The more you do those trips, the less people you find who are keen anymore. [aughs] That was Mikala to a T.”

Mikala’s formula for scoring – be patient, roll with the punches on the road, and always look around the next corner – seemed relatively straight-forward, yet it didn’t come as easily as the endless flood of incredible images would have you believe. “We’d drive so far,” says Dylan. “We’d fly, get on boats, you name it, and whatever happened we’d just take it on the chin. That’s what adventurers and people seeking out crazy waves are like. They don’t whinge. They’re doers. Sometimes you’d get skunked, and sometimes you’d score the best barrel of your life!”

Mikala was known for scoring endlessly, but he spent as much time travelling and learning every corner of the Indonesian coast as he did surfing it. “It’s great to travel with a crew who are willing to sacrifice a couple of hours in the water to go suss out a few nooks and crannies,” Mikala told me in 2016, debriefing yet another trip to a little known corner. “You hear rumours of waves, but you never really know until you go look.”

“I was talking to Mikala about doing a trip once,” says Mick, “And he goes, ‘Well, this wave could be on. It might not be on, but I’m happy to set it up for you?’ Which of course I was cool with. He’d just had back surgery and couldn’t surf. He could barely sit still and in the end he said, ‘You know what? I’m just gonna come and hang out and make sure everything goes smoothly.’ He put himself through so much pain to come, just on the potential that this wave might break, and if it did he wanted to see it.”

“There’s a few guys who are on the same wavelength of checking the forecast and knowing when certain spots are gonna be good,” says Nate, “Whenever I’d see a text or a phone call from Mikala I’d already know we’re probably gonna be leaving tonight or early tomorrow morning. He loved anyone who was committed and ready to go whenever.”

“On a lot of these trips you go and you get skunked and it’s just like, it is what it is. But then I’ll always remember his chuckle and grin when it all comes together and you score, because it is so much work. You don’t know how many times that guy’s been out sitting on a little feral boat and doesn’t get anything. His dedication to certain waves and destinations is unparalleled. I think if you asked the gnarliest guys who’ve done it — guys like Timmy Turner and Travis Potter — they would agree that his commitment is way beyond even theirs.”

“Looking back at all the photos now, something I find beyond belief is that I did over 20 years of trips with him. Morocco, South Africa, multiple Mentawai boat trips and outer island things, and that’s just me. Mikala had relationships with almost every single photographer who’s based here in Bali — from Jason Childs to Dustin Humphrey, Brad Masters, Scotty Hammonds, Damea Dorsey. All of those guys have hard drives full of trips that he did with them. Shooting photos, videos, travelling and this and that, he might have done more than any other surfer. Ever.”

Iconic moviemaker Taylor Steele moved to Bali a few years after Mikala. Match made in heaven, right? They barely shot an Indonesian frame. “You could never get out of him where he was going on a swell,” laughs Taylor. “He would have a cheeky grin on his face and you just knew he was gonna score, but you couldn’t get him to tell you much. So I never really went on Indo trips with him because he was mostly going solo.”

The pair did end up working together on Mikala’s part for Taylor’s Innersection movie project. It was only a short edit but Mikala acting out a skit where he played everyone from a folk singer to the fourth Malloy Brother before wrapping it all up asking ‘Why can’t I just be?’ surmised the Hawaiian’s character perfectly. The fact he’s ripping at a handful of timeless Indonesian classics only adds to the time capsule vibe of the clip. 

“I’m glad I stumbled upon the Innersection stuff again this past week,” says Taylor, “It captures Mikala’s sense of humour perfectly. He’s not one to brag or boast or make a big song and dance about anything he does, he downplays it all so much that you don’t quite get how crazy his experiences are, or how well he executes his surfing and travel. And him with the cards, in character, was a play on the irony of how much the non-surfing sells the surfing these days.”

“I could really relate to Mikala’s nature because I’m quiet too,” says Taylor, “But he’d always have a cheeky grin or make a wisecrack. He was definitely not one of those guys who’ll just agree with what you’ll say — he’ll challenge you on stuff. And he loves to mess with people and sit back and let you say something stupid, then call you out on it.”

As well as working well with the best photographers and filmers in the world, Mikala started to take matters into his own hands, literally. “We were both doing camera boards years ago,” says Anthony Walsh. “We were into camera mount stuff, backpacks, even just holding a regular big Canon camera. We were both the same, you’d go somewhere and just wanna do your own thing and get your shots and not have to worry about anyone else. So me, Mikala, and Brian Connolly all had the idea to get on with the POV thing way back, then when the GoPro came out it made our lives that much easier.”

“What Mikala dedicated everything to was searching for the right kind of waves, going to the ends of the earth, and somehow keeping all these waves secret at the same time. And that was another reason why he loved GoPro so much; he could just go on a trip on his own, get epic photos and footage, and not even have to tell anyone where it was.”

While Mikala’s endless quest to surf and document empty waves to then share them with the world might seem counter-intuitive given the potential to risk their little-known nature, he had figured out a way around that too. “He would always wait to put stuff out,” says Nate. “He’d be like, ‘People know where we were, but they don’t know when we were there,’ so they couldn’t look up past forecast models or whatever. He had no problem waiting six months, a year.. It’s like he was given this old school corelord rulebook that’d been handed down that says ‘Here’s the right way to do things. Do it correctly and all the waves will come to you.’ And they usually did.”

Mikala’s solo work was breathtaking and so was his timing, as fellow POV maestro Walsh confirms. “When we were real young we were both trying to get the same shots at Pipe and Backdoor and Off The Wall. Then we got into the camera stuff on our own and it was the right time, right place, with social media and magazines. The way POV took off was perfect because it allowed us to go down that route, rather than having to keep pulling into closeouts or grovel on the QS like everyone else. We were super lucky, and we’ve laughed about it together so often, sitting in the middle of nowhere getting barrelled, with someone else paying us to do it.”

Any tricks of the trade? “Mikala and I would geek out and bounce things off each other all the time. Whenever a new camera was released we’d be sitting there swapping settings, or saying, ‘I’ve been doing it this way, you should try it.’ And he was the master of posting his stuff years later, or flipping photos, ’cos there were so many waves he had found and surfed that other people had probably never seen before.”

Mikala’s point-of-view shots from the bowels of vividly coloured caverns, wrestling foamballs and dodging Indian Ocean guillotines struck a chord with surfers and civilians across the planet. “He took some of the greatest ever pics from deep in the tube,” says Kelly Slater, “Things nobody got to see before.”

“With 40 years of photography under my belt there are shots of his I would dream to have taken,” says Ted. “The greatest self-portraits of all time! Everyone just weeps when they see those glass barrels with his reflection and the sun. He knew what he was doing. He knew the elements that would work and how to apply them.”

Mikala occupied a unique space in the surfing landscape. He is the most well-travelled Hawaiian pro surfer in history, married an Australian, was a fixture in Indonesia. If you operate in surfing circles you will most likely have crossed paths with Mikala, and you’ll understand why he was so popular. “He was an incredible surfer,” says Mick, “But we’ve had lots of incredible surfers over the years. It’s the ones who have had an impact on so many different people in so many different areas that have the attributes you wanna live by. He was just so generous with his time and his patience. He never asked for anything back, never asked for any fanfare. Mikala helped people from the kindness of his heart.”

Despite being one of the best surfers and photographers on the planet, Mikala was first and foremost a dedicated husband and committed father. Spend time in Canggu and you’d more likely see Mikala at Batu Balong sharing longboard waves with his daughters than jostling for position at Echo Beach.

“I’d always see Mikala around Bali,” says Taylor, “But we really became friends just by being dads. We had two daughters that were the same age, and we were both really excited to teach them to surf. They were too young to even really be interested but we would take them down to Kuta with these pink soft-tops and we’d really sell it — bribing them with ice creams if they rode a wave the longest, doing funny little things like that.”

“Mikala would drop his kids at school every morning, then come past the factory I was shaping out of with Luke Studer,” says Dylan, “And that’s how I’ll always remember him. He’d hang out, talking about boards with Luke and I. He was always really experimental, like, ‘What do you reckon about this?’ Then Luke would try it out, and Mikala would surf, then he’d pick his kids up from school after. It was really cool to see, you know, the same as with my kids, where you’re always just trying to be a good dad.”

“Mikala was close with a lot of people, much more than with me,” says Kelly, “But I felt a great kinship with him, and felt we were destined to surf a lot together in the future. We would message each other all the time about surf, swells, pics and ideas for years. He was such a lovely guy, nobody had a bad word to say about him. It’s just so sad and unexpected that it’s hard to process. He left a wonderful legacy and mark in the world.”

Mikala was on a family holiday in the Mentawais, staying at a land camp and surfing and hanging with Emma and the girls when tragedy struck. Buddha was en route to the Mentawais, to pick up his adventure buddy and continue on with their endless quest, when he heard the news. 

“He was surfing this mysto spot, a pretty heavy wave, and he was in a big barrel. There were some six footers coming through but in typical Mikala fashion he wanted to sit and wait for the bomb. It finally came, he took off, made the drop, pulled in, and that, that was the wave… it’s hard to believe.”

Surfing’s bandwidth has been awash with Mikala this past week, a flood of deep memories, irreverent moments and the incredible tube shots that became his trademark. He will be sadly and sorely missed, but his legacy will live on forever #MJAllDay. 

“If you’ve ever gone on a bit of a surf adventure,” says Tai, “And gone a little bit further and chased whatever’s around the corner, with all the adventure and the roughing it, Mikala’s played a hand in that. He was always the guy who everyone looked at, especially when it came to Indo missions. Then there was the whole GoPro thing, which he took to another level. It’s so much effort just to get a photo, but it’s paid off, right? That became who he was as a surfer, but beyond that he was also an adventurer, an artist, a family man, and just a really good dude.”

“There’s all these core guys strewn across Indonesia and very few of them are okay,” says Nate. “The majority of ’em are just so far out there because of this addiction to getting barrelled, and all the travel and stuff. Very few of them have wives, let alone a wife, kids, a family, sponsors, anything structured.” 

“When I look back and try to make sense of it all, as a surfer and a lover of adventure and travel, Mikala did it better than anyone.”    

Like this piece? You may also enjoy this personal narrative on Mikala by Jed Smith, or Jed’s piece on the dangers of Indonesian surf travel.