Mark Davidson
He talks to Olivia Edward about how his love of surfing has led to a
greater understanding of the processes he investigates and the unique
way in which he went about testing the waves on Europe’s first artificial surf reef.
I was born on the coast. My childhood home was literally just a stone’s throw from the beach and my bedroom window looked out over the sea. Around the age of nine, I started surfing. The sport has remained my greatest passion ever since and probably steered the course of my life more than anything else.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left school but I knew what I didn’t want to do. Quite a few of my friends at the time were working on building sites and I did a bit of work on there, too, but I didn’t like the idea of doing it for the rest of my life. I wasn’t that motivated at school and didn’t think university was for me, but when I saw an Open University programme about oceanography, it really inspired me to learn.
Oceanography is a bit like physical geography; it covers every aspect of the sea – the biology, the chemistry and the physics. I gravitated towards the physics because waves, tides, beaches, sediment transport and currents are the aspects of oceanography that really grab me.
I’ve spent my whole life jumping in the water and being washed around by waves and currents. I think it gives me a huge advantage because I don’t just come at oceanography from a purely theoretical perspective; I have an intuitive feel for the way the whole system works because I spend a lot of time actually in it.
I think a big driver for a lot of natural scientists is going out in the field and wanting to be able to explain what they see. I would go to a beach one day and experience really good surf and return the next month and experience awful surf. I immediately wanted to know why. Getting to the bottom of these riddles is still what drives me today.
Here at Plymouth University, I’m now part of the biggest group of coastal scientists in Britain. It’s a real mixing pot of people from different disciplines: geographers, oceanographers, engineers and mathematicians. Together we try to measure, understand and predict how the shape of our coastline will change as the climate changes.
We have novel ways of monitoring the coastline, such as coastal video cameras – a bit like CCTV but pointed at the beach rather than shopping centres. We take those images and rectify them using clever mathematics so we end up with a map of the beach. We can use this quantitative information to measure things such as the shifting shape of sand bars. We can leave the cameras up for decades recording how the beach is changing every minute of the day. It’s an amazing data source.
The goal is to understand and produce a global generic model for the way beaches behave. This will be really useful for coastal managers who are in charge of defending a particular stretch of coast. We can give them answers about how the area might flood, erode or accrete during the next ten, 20, 30 years. Our beaches are our natural defence against the oceans,
so it’s important.
I used to leave surfing off my CV because it had a very negative image, but now it’s very high on my CV and leads to work. I was recently asked to test the artificial surf reef at Boscombe in Dorset. It’s the first one in Britain, and as far as I know, the first one in Europe. It was built purely to improve the surfing conditions, but the local surfers didn’t feel it was working, so the council asked me to objectively test the waves.
I scratched my head for a while trying to work out how to do it. But then I came up with the idea of stuffing a GPS down the back of my wetsuit and having it continuously record while I went out for a surf session, and afterwards creating a bit of software to analyse the data.
I found the reef was producing a plunging wave – the hollow tubing waves surfers like to ride – but the ride length wasn’t as long as it should be and there were a few other problems. It’s not a complete failure, however. This is incredibly innovative marine technology and I admire the council for going ahead and doing it, and the New Zealand company ASR for trying to progress this as an idea. They’re going to make some modifications this summer and I’ll go back and test it in the winter. It’s still a pretty extraordinary achievement, and eventually they will get it right.
Curriculum vitae
1964 Born in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex
1975–83 Attended Boundstone Comprehensive, Lancing, West Sussex
1983–86 BSc (Hons) in Oceanography, University College of Swansea
1988 Research associate, University of Wales, Cardiff. Investigation of waves, currents and sediment dynamics on coasts headed by sea walls
1990–91 Postdoctoral research associate, University of Wales, Cardiff, working on the British Beach and Nearshore Dynamics Experiment
1991 Completed PhD in coastal hydrodynamics
1991–present Various positions at the University of Plymouth. Currently associate professor (reader) in coastal processes
August 2011
I was born on the coast. My childhood home was literally just a stone’s throw from the beach and my bedroom window looked out over the sea. Around the age of nine, I started surfing. The sport has remained my greatest passion ever since and probably steered the course of my life more than anything else.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left school but I knew what I didn’t want to do. Quite a few of my friends at the time were working on building sites and I did a bit of work on there, too, but I didn’t like the idea of doing it for the rest of my life. I wasn’t that motivated at school and didn’t think university was for me, but when I saw an Open University programme about oceanography, it really inspired me to learn.
Oceanography is a bit like physical geography; it covers every aspect of the sea – the biology, the chemistry and the physics. I gravitated towards the physics because waves, tides, beaches, sediment transport and currents are the aspects of oceanography that really grab me.
I’ve spent my whole life jumping in the water and being washed around by waves and currents. I think it gives me a huge advantage because I don’t just come at oceanography from a purely theoretical perspective; I have an intuitive feel for the way the whole system works because I spend a lot of time actually in it.
I think a big driver for a lot of natural scientists is going out in the field and wanting to be able to explain what they see. I would go to a beach one day and experience really good surf and return the next month and experience awful surf. I immediately wanted to know why. Getting to the bottom of these riddles is still what drives me today.
Here at Plymouth University, I’m now part of the biggest group of coastal scientists in Britain. It’s a real mixing pot of people from different disciplines: geographers, oceanographers, engineers and mathematicians. Together we try to measure, understand and predict how the shape of our coastline will change as the climate changes.
We have novel ways of monitoring the coastline, such as coastal video cameras – a bit like CCTV but pointed at the beach rather than shopping centres. We take those images and rectify them using clever mathematics so we end up with a map of the beach. We can use this quantitative information to measure things such as the shifting shape of sand bars. We can leave the cameras up for decades recording how the beach is changing every minute of the day. It’s an amazing data source.
The goal is to understand and produce a global generic model for the way beaches behave. This will be really useful for coastal managers who are in charge of defending a particular stretch of coast. We can give them answers about how the area might flood, erode or accrete during the next ten, 20, 30 years. Our beaches are our natural defence against the oceans,
so it’s important.
I used to leave surfing off my CV because it had a very negative image, but now it’s very high on my CV and leads to work. I was recently asked to test the artificial surf reef at Boscombe in Dorset. It’s the first one in Britain, and as far as I know, the first one in Europe. It was built purely to improve the surfing conditions, but the local surfers didn’t feel it was working, so the council asked me to objectively test the waves.
I scratched my head for a while trying to work out how to do it. But then I came up with the idea of stuffing a GPS down the back of my wetsuit and having it continuously record while I went out for a surf session, and afterwards creating a bit of software to analyse the data.
I found the reef was producing a plunging wave – the hollow tubing waves surfers like to ride – but the ride length wasn’t as long as it should be and there were a few other problems. It’s not a complete failure, however. This is incredibly innovative marine technology and I admire the council for going ahead and doing it, and the New Zealand company ASR for trying to progress this as an idea. They’re going to make some modifications this summer and I’ll go back and test it in the winter. It’s still a pretty extraordinary achievement, and eventually they will get it right.
Curriculum vitae
1964 Born in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex
1975–83 Attended Boundstone Comprehensive, Lancing, West Sussex
1983–86 BSc (Hons) in Oceanography, University College of Swansea
1988 Research associate, University of Wales, Cardiff. Investigation of waves, currents and sediment dynamics on coasts headed by sea walls
1990–91 Postdoctoral research associate, University of Wales, Cardiff, working on the British Beach and Nearshore Dynamics Experiment
1991 Completed PhD in coastal hydrodynamics
1991–present Various positions at the University of Plymouth. Currently associate professor (reader) in coastal processes
August 2011
