Is Surfing Taking Head Injuries Serious Enough?

Owen Wright, Albee Layer, India Robinson, Billly Kemper, Kai Lenny, Jamie Mitchell, Billy Kemper, Stirling Spencer, Courtney Conlogue, Koa Rothman, Jeremy Flores, Shawn Dollar, India Robinson, Nikki Van Dijk, Tyler Wright, Natxo Gonzalez, and Jack Robinson.  

No, not a new cast list for a surfing-style Love Island, but all these surfers do share a common thread. They have all had serious concussion issues throughout their career. It’s a relatively long list. It may also be the tip of the iceberg. Despite the relatively high profile of most of these surfers, surfing still has a hidden headache.

“The worst was when I didn’t feel like a surfer. Surfing wasn't a goal. My only goal was at some stage in the future to sit and have a coffee with a friend with no pain,” said Natxo Gonzalez. “That was the extent of my ambition.”

The Basque big-wave surfer suffered two concussions - the first at Puerto Escondido, then another six months later at giant Nazare in 2023. He kept surfing, with his career on the line, even winning big wave slab events. Until the pain got too much. He had five months in bed, suffering an endless migraine and was unable to turn the lights on, let alone go to the supermarket. 

Natxo’s injuries didn’t come from hitting his head. Most, like Owen Wright’s, stem from the “whiplash” movement as the head is jerked back and forth during a wipeout or from getting hit by waves. Also known as DAI (Diffuse Axonal Injury), it is caused when rotational or acceleration-deceleration forces shear and tear the brain's white matter nerve fibers, or axons. It can happen in high-speed car accidents, falls, or in shaken baby syndrome. It can also, we are finding out, in heavy wipeouts. 

And while the increased use of helmets will reduce impacts to the head, either from boards or hitting the reef, evidence on their ability to prevent concussions of this kind is limited.

Despite being one of surfing’s elite big wave surfers, Natxo had no one to turn to or very little information on the subject of his concussion. That is even though in the last few years, several professional surfers have gone through a similar period of pain, isolation and depression. 

Albee Layer has probably been the most consistent and honest in showing how a concussion can affect a life, and potentially end a big-wave career. Last year, he dropped In Depth, which explained how a concussion during the 2019 Jaws contest led to depression. “I was not myself a lot of the time. Depression, I had full mental breakdowns at times. It got to the point where I wanted to hurt myself. It was bad,” Surfer reported last year.

During these difficult years, Albee got treatment and sought help from other people who’d gone through head injuries, including former big-wave world record holder Shawn Dollar. The Santa Cruz surfer shared a mantra that helped Albee gain some self-awareness and put his issues into context: “It’s an injury, it isn’t you.”

"The hardest part is that no one understands it,” said Stirling Spencer in his criminally underrated film, Are You Serious? “ If people understood, I could've healed in probably two years. It's been five years, and I'm probably 50 per cent."

In that film, Spencer Traumatic shows how he was eventually diagnosed with Brain Injury (TBI) and post-concussion syndrome, after being hit in the head by the fin of a surfboard. What followed the incident was a spiral into suicidal depression, before he found a doctor, Dr. J. Douglas Brown, who helped his recovery and effectively saved his life. 

Natxo was facing a similar traumatic journey. A local doctor had advised that his surfing career was effectively over, and he couldn’t find any solutions. It was after watching Spencer’s film that he fought for better answers. He made a call to his sponsor, Red Bull and came clean on the extent of his injurym which he’d been hiding. They backed him, and more importantly, put him in touch with specialists who offered both a diagnosis and a way out. His recent performances at Mullaghmore and Morocco this winter have shown that he is back to full capacity. 

“I still believe many surfers are having micro impacts and concussions every surf,” he said, “and so that over time that has to have a massive impact.” The clinical studies and reporting of the issue are, however, thin on the ground. 

In 2024, a study titled Concussion Incidence, Mechanism, and Perspectives Among Elite Australian Surfers, was done at Surfing Australia’s High Performance Centre. It found 13 of the 40 participants had a history of diagnosed concussion, and 95% reporting potential symptoms after wipeouts, with "contact versus the water surface" identified as the primary mechanism. 

Many surfers reported symptoms consistent with concussion but were not formally diagnosed, suggesting a gap in awareness and medical attention. The study recommended specific cervical and vestibular testing, which are more detailed concussion tests, as a means of injury prevention.

In the USA, a 20-year analysis of surfing head and neck injuries at Emergency Departments showed that while there was a decrease in overall injuries, the concussion rates remained steady at 5% of admissions, and rose to 8% for those under 20s. 

Again, the studies are useful, but would only be capturing a small percentage of concussions incurred while surfing. Surfers who have copped a few holddowns at Blacks, or spent a winter packing closeouts at Puerto Escondido, rarely report to a medical facility, even if they suspect they had a concussion. 

The number of surfers out there who are suffering, or who have suffered, the effects of concussion and brain injuries is absolutely mind-boggling. Big wave and elite surfers might well be over-represented, but even a tiny slice of the world’s surfing population having a concussion adds up to huge numbers dealing with the issue. 

Surfing has a headache. It’s not going away anytime soon.