I'm thinking of making the Cortes Bank text below into the start of a SCEC abstract, due Aug. 20. I'm trying to work on my writing. My writing was pretty poor 10 years ago-now it is pretty good, but dense and dull. I'm trying to make it more exciting, or, in this case, unusual. What do you think? The movie is going to be playing in our local stadium seating theater, so I will be there. The internet says that noone has surfed Cortes Bank since Jan 2000 filming. I still need to find out the source of the waves-did they come from the southern hemisphere, or from a big northern hemisphere storm, and from how far away? To be that big, probably is a big storm off the west coast...
Oh...I better give credit for part of the idea to a seismologist co-author...
Chris

Step Into Liquid
During January 2000 a large ocean swell arrived from a long journey across the Pacific Ocean to the area of Cortes Bank, 175 km southwest of Los Angeles. Cortes Bank is the first place that these waves interacted with the North American continent, slowed, and broke as 20 m surf. Surfers riding these waves became part of the film “Step into Liquid”. Cortes Bank exists so far from land because it is the first place that the Pacific Plate interacts with North America, resulting in an enormous system of anticlines above an enormous system of faults. This interaction between plates has evolved over time, creating the wide, deep, bumpy shelf characteristic of continental borderlands worldwide.