The Location Of Mick Fanning’s Wave Debunked By Kepa Acero

Philosophically, we’re not for the internet heroism of revealing secret spots. Dropping pins on surf spots sure is a sweet way to pick up some clicks, but our peculiar and mostly-broken moral compass takes a wider berth on this. Last week, you saw Mick’s wave, we all did and it was all anyone could talk about for the next 48 hours. We posted about it, a few times, Kelly Slater commented, “Gonna be a bummer when it gets out.” And, like us, you probably had a long session on Google Earth, looking for warm water locations and set ups that resembled the clip that made the internet lose its tiny mind. The google search: “Surf Western Sahara” took us straight to Basque surfer Kepa Acero’s video of him travelling to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, and finding a wave that looked quite similar to Mick’s – a perfect, albeit shin high hollow right. “The waves were rolling and rolling, and I was wishing for being the size of an ant,” said Kepa diminished by the long failed journey.

There was speculation this was the wave but today Kepa Acero debunked that with this post stating: Many people ask me if this wave I tried to surf in 2014 was the same the one @mfanno recently surfed. I have to say that at first it took me some time to if it was or not, as the morphology of the spot is very similar, but after study it properly, I realized that IT´S NOT. 
I did not get to surf it because it was too small… Still have been thinking many days and nights on that spot, and Mick fanning´s clip woke up so many feelings that I can´t wait to go back and surf it properly!

Conspiracists will make the claim that Rip Curl and Mick paid him to say that. It’s worth noting that along with being one of surfing’s best-travelled (he’s the type of guy that spends three weeks in remote Alaska alone), Kepa’s one of the most endearing men you’ll ever have a conversation with…at the same time we wouldn’t blame him for trying to maintain the sanctity of a wave he found back in 2014.

For the record, Stab has learned from a reliable source that it is, in fact, a different location, however on the same continent. And, we’d get a ton of clicks with the story title: Mick Fanning’s Perfect Right Location Revealed but it just… doesn’t… feel… right. And, we’re keen on finding it out for ourselves.

We know there’s no such thing as a secret spot but we still enjoy empty waves and the pursuit of surfing as many as possible before our days end in the dirt. We’ve been approached more than once to help develop an app that allows the user to see historical data (photo + videos) on breaks when conditions were similar to those in an upcoming forecast. Like, a roadmap of where you should go based off an incoming swell – clever and disastrous all at once. Pious of us to avoid? Good god yes: guilty as charged.