Surfline

Surfline was founded in 1985 as a pay-per-call telephone surf report based on weather, the National Weather Service's buoy data, Callers heard a 90-second recorded message with information about the size, duration, and angle of waves at 22 California surfing locations. Surfline was founded by Southern California surfer Jerry Arnold and David Wilk. Previously, surfers used tips from local surfing stores or friends that live within eye-sight of the beach. Through the merger, Collins became a co-owner of Surfline, then purchased complete ownership in 1990. Collins helped develop Surfline's early methodologies for predicting surfing conditions, before dying in 2011. The first live camera feed was created in 1996 at Huntington Beach. By the early 2000s, Surfline provided data for 37 beaches in California, four in Hawaii, 17 in Florida, and 20 others predominantly on the East Coast. It had 350,000 monthly visitors in 2000 Around 2007, Surfline acquired the website Buoyweather.com. In 2007, Surfline expanded its network of beach cameras and created its first Surfline smartphone apps. This was followed by the acquisition of FishTrack.com in 2012. Fishtrack.com was the Surfline.com equivalent, but for fishing, instead of surfing. In 2020, the company raised $30 million in venture capital funding from The Chernin Group. It also advised the 2021 Olympic Committee on anticipated wave conditions at the first olympic surfing competition. ==Impacts on surf culture==

The introduction of Surfline.com and the increase in reliance on the real time footage has changed surfers' lifestyles. With the advances in the technologies and ability to predict the surfing conditions at various spots it has given surfers the ability to make future plans and make decisions about where to surf or if it's worth it to go anywhere. It used to be that surfers relied on word of mouth, seasonal tendencies or tides to know what the surf was going to be like. Some would take days off from work based on this unreliable information and then be disappointed when there were no waves that day or there would be days where the surf was ideal and surfers would miss it altogether. Surfer magazine’s editor Brendon Thomas has said in response to this shift, “I’m not saying that’s necessarily a good thing, but it’s true.” == References ==