TWC wouldn’t be TWC without all the great photos out there. And one of the guys who was taking some of the best surfing and underwater shots was Hawaiian Jon Mozo. Sadly, Mozo died yesterday doing what he loved doing: shooting in the water at Pipeline. Here’s are the key details from a report in the Honolulu Advertiser:
Mozo, 33, was swimming and taking photos of surfers yesterday. About 2 p.m. bodyboarders alerted lifeguards that a swimmer was in trouble, said Jim Howe, operations chief for the city Ocean Safety Division.
An off-duty lifeguard who was in the water dived and found Mozo. He and others brought Mozo to shore at Ehukai Beach Park and tried to revive him with a defibrillator, Fire Capt. Kenison Tejada said. Mozo had head injuries and had no pulse, Tejada said. Mozo was pronounced dead at Kahuku Hospital.
“People are just speechless,” said fellow surf photographer Bernie Baker, who was shooting pictures from the beach at Ehukai yesterday.
Baker said yesterday was one of those “pristine, perfect kind of photo and surfing days.” The surf at Pipeline was not especially big, he said, but the swell was out of the west “and as any North Shore lifeguard can tell you, when you have an extreme west swell you have an extremely strong current and it’s very easy to get dragged into a shallow area off the reef.
“He probably found himself caught in the face of a wave, and with the power of these west swells it may have dragged him up and over the face of the wave and flipped him into the shallow water. He would have hit the reef, which at best has 5 feet of water.”
You can check out his work here. And buy some of it here. You never know when it will all come to an end, so live it up while you can…
The Dude liked waves…
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