The Octopus Hunter
Meet Basque bomb-chaser Imanol Yeregi, the Octopus Hunter of Zumaia
This spring, while traveling through Spain after the Zarautz Pro, I caravanned to Portugal with young Basque surfer Imanol Yeregi, and while language barriers kept our conversations fairly brief, he came off like a generous old soul with a hunger in his eyes. Taken under the wings of Aritz Aranburu, Hodei Collazo, Natxo Gonzalez, Adur Letamendia and the rest of the PUKAS family, Imanol, they all assured me, was the real deal, one of Europe’s most well-rounded up and comers.
The Basque are cut from the heartiest of cloth, and Imanol flies the flag proudly. According to filmmaker Jon Aspuru, who made the beautiful edit above, “Imanol is from a little town called Zumaia. As the tradition of the town was to catch octopus, he started learning it with his grandfather… at the same time he learned surfing with his father…”
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