Over the years, would-be surfing Da Vincis have offered myriad plans-ranging sunken junked cars to arcane "wave catapults" and "centrifugal surfing machines
as possible solutions to the wave shortage faced by an ever-increasing urban su population. But due to a maze of coastal regulatory hurdles and a lack of funding, no one has ever actually built an artificial ocean reef designed specifically to produce surfing waves. Recently however, there has been a quiet transpacific reef race going on between
major surfing nations aiming to create the world's first test-tube wave. The US and have artificial surfing reefs in the last stages of regulatory approval, and one of the could be built as early as this Spring.
