Report and photos by SurfTaiwan.com

Wow, what a summer! The south of Taiwan has been pumping with swell after swell rolling in. And amazingly, the east Coast has had a great summer as well. Normally typhoons come too close to the east coast, bringing massive waves and huge winds. This did happen a few times this year, but some of the typhoons on the east stayed quite a way offshore and provided clean groundswell.

While this is certainly not expected on the east coast for summer’s in the future, the strange weather pattern was a boon for surfers this year, offering plentiful waves on the south, east and north coasts. And most swells this year have been produced by typhoons so far offshore that typhoon warnings were very rarely called, leaving more water time for surfers throughout the country and making a lot of people very happy.

But for most of summer the star (as always for this time of the year) of the show was the south of the country. A multitude of swells have rolled in this season as well as several world renowned surfers.

Surf Taiwan has hosted and guided a couple of professional photo and film shoots this season, the most recent with Californian Chris Del Moro and Hawaiian Daniel Jones for a segment in the surf film Se7en Signs, a Taylor Steele production directed by Nathan Myers. This project scored perfect waves with three camera’s covering every angle. It was an exhausting week, filming from sunrise to sunset. Nathan Myers and Andy ‘Six String’ filmed video, while Moonwalker took all the photos. We hit a host of very scenic and wave rich locations.

Says Daniel of the trip, “When I got home to Hawaii I didn't even want to surf, there were so many people in the water compared to Taiwan!”

Chris shares Dan’s sentiments; “Taiwan, I love that tropical island, I was so stoked to return and surf warm water waves. Such an intriguing place."

We’re now just starting winter – if you can call 23C water temperature winter – and the season’s had a grand opening. Stay tuned for more!

Swellnet will run monthly reports and galleries from Taiwan courtesy of SurfTaiwan.