On vacation by the ocean, children – and adults – love to play with the waves. They attract and they repel. Sometimes they make you lose your mind. However, they rarely measure more than a few centimeters in height. It is without common measure with these beaches where one finds the highest waves of the world.
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All surfers know it, it is in Nazaré (Portugal) that we find the highest waves of the world. There, an underwater canyon 500 meters deep ends in a bench of sand shallow. Enough to give birth to enormous waves when the swell coming from the sea hits these gigantic invisible cliffs. Thus in November 2017, a surfer would have tamed in Nazaré, a wave of no less than 24.38 meters. And in December 2018, another would have even faced, in the same place, a wave exceeding 30 meters.
Another remarkable spot: that of Cortes Bank (United States). It is located about 160 kilometers from the Californian coast and corresponds to a seamount. It is more exactly the Bishop Rock, a peak which rises up to one to two meters below the water levelwhich creates impressive waves, also approaching 25 meters in height.
Third unmissable meeting place for extreme surfers: Jaws, a beach in Hawaii (United States). A beach which owes its name to the ferocity of its waves which sometimes break at almost 50 km/h and whose height does not have much to envy those of Nazaré or Cortes Bank.
In France, it is on the side of Pays Basque that we find the highest waves. In a particular place which shelters an underwater rocky outcrop, the Belharra Perdun. A shoal that regularly gives rise to waves 10 to 15 meters high. Sometimes even going up to more than 20 meters.
The biggest waves of scientists
The trouble with surfers is that they measure the height of the waves… empirically. From photos and videos. Scientists rely on instruments. They recently placed buoys for this purpose in thesouthern oceanan ocean renowned for the violence of its storms. 700 kilometers south of New Zealand they measured a wave 23.8 meters high, but suspect even bigger waves were not recorded.
It’s probably finally under water that we find the highest waves in the world. Under water ? Eh yes. Oceanographers call them internal waves. They originate from layers of water of different densities that do not move in the same direction. According to the researchers, they move slowly. But their amplitude is impressive. Some have already been measured at no less than 500 meters in height in China Sea!
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