RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Through a publication on its website, NASA highlighted that the coastal and oceanic conditions in the north of Peru create “a place of dreams for surfers“.
According to the entity, the waters off the Pacific coast, north of the country, routinely form what is called the world’s longest wave.
Although there is no certain way of knowing, “the seemingly endless waves that reach the fishing village of Puerto Malabrigo (Chicama) are legendary among surfers”.
In some parts of the world, waves can be ridden for seconds, but the agency claims that Chicama’s can be ridden for minutes.
In an image acquired on March 23, 2021, with the Operational Land Imager (OLI) aboard Landsat 8, rows of waves are seen lining up neatly as they approach the coast.
University of Maine oceanographer and former surfer Andrew Thomas stated that the waves are generated by storm systems and weather fronts that occur thousands of kilometers away in the Pacific Ocean and occasionally in the Antarctic Ocean.
The expert assured that as the waves propagate in open waters, waves with a similar wavelength (and speed) become ordered and begin to travel together “because the coast of Peru is very deep.”
“These large swells will continue their journey until they reach very close to the shore,” he said.
Andrew Thomas stated that another characteristic is that the waves arriving from the open ocean travel almost parallel to this part of the Peruvian coast.
“This is not common in Peru or Chile, where most waves simply hit a coastline perpendicular to the direction of wave propagation,” Thomas said.
It means that Chicama’s waves can break along a long stretch of coastline.
“The breaks that surfers ride most often start along the headland that juts out into the Pacific. It is where four points, Malpaso, Llaves, El Point, and El Hombre, activate the swell crest causing it to overturn and spread out as it approaches the shallow shore,” NASA explained.
“Chicama waves break from the left, which means they extend from left to right from the perspective of an observer onshore. The large swell is more consistent from March to November, and some of the sections occasionally connect during that period. The distance from Malpaso to the pier is almost 4 kilometers (2.5 miles), but surfers generally have to ride several waves to cover this distance,” added the agency.
Because of its coastal and oceanic conditions, Thomas called Chicama “a surfer’s dream place”.
The area obtained protection from the Peruvian government against development and infrastructure construction that would damage the waves in 2013.
Over time, in addition to Chicama’s waves, dozens of other waves in different parts of Peru have been added to the list.