At the apex of his career as a National Geographic Explorer, an accident on a friend's ranch shattered Albert's ankle. He was in his mid thirties, a new father of two, and he had to choose between limb salvage and amputation. A single photograph of Mike Coots, who had his leg bitten off by a tiger shark and came back an adaptive surf champion and shark conservationist, decided it for Albert.
What followed was phantom limb pain and a long search for a way through it. What worked was other people. Mike Coots. Alex Howard, who became his first surf coach. Jeff Okuyama, keeping him alive in the water on the North Shore. His own children, watching.
He had barely surfed. He trains on the coast of Southern California, breaks his ribs in the shore break of a North Shore winter, and finishes in the Mentawai Islands with Chief Tom “Pohaku” Stone, a teacher and artisan of Hawaiian culture, who tells him you do not get to choose what waves come, only how you ride them.
What he is chasing is flow. Mike describes it as smiling inside the violence of a wave until your whole body becomes part of it. The film is about getting there, and about who carries you while you try.
Made in collaboration with Evolve Studios.