Alexa, how are the waves? Amazon and Surfline.com team up on surf report ‘skill’

Imagine lying in bed cozy and warm, wondering if you should get up, pack your surfboard and go surf.

“Alexa, ask Surfline what’s the surf report at the Huntington Beach Pier?” 

Or maybe you have a trip coming up, and want to know whether to pack a wetsuit.

“Alexa, what’s the water temperature at Waikiki?”

Finding out the surf conditions just got easier, as Huntington Beach-based forecasting company Surfline.com this week announced a new collaboration with Amazon called “Surfline for Alexa” giving wave-chasers a new way to “know before you go,” as the Surfline motto goes.

“I think that’s a cultural value of our company, to be pushing our limits,” said Ross Garrett, Surfline.com’s Senior Vice President of corporate development. “Surfline, in the surf media landscape, we have a bit of responsibility to take the surfing world into the future. There’s not really any one else that is going to do that. But that’s not new, we’ve done that for 35 years.”

From phones to Fitbits

When the company was first started by founder Sean Collins with 976-SURF, the call-in recording was groundbreaking for the time. Most 976 calls at the time were illicit in nature, Garrett joked, and there were plenty of upset parents wondering what the $1.50 charge was on their phone bill.

Then came the invention of the fax machine.  Then came the website, admittedly “clunky and weird,” Garrett said, and the first web cams, which were flip photos that uploaded so fast that the stream looked like a video.

Besides getting forecasts from computers and phones, Surfline has also in recent years brought surf reports to wearable products. Four years ago, they teamed up with watch brand Nixon for the “Ultra Tide,” which gives surf forecasts and tides. They also recently teamed with Fitbit to have the Surfline app on the wrist device.

Developing an Alexa “skill” (an app for voice-activated Amazon devices) is just another way for the surf forecasting company to explore new methods to deliver wave information.

“Voice is on this really rapid curve of adoption. The interface is getting better and better. For us, it’s super important that we can figure this thing out,” Garrett said. “We’re returning to voice, (but now) it’s a robot reading the data and output. It’s kind of the next frontier of how we deliver value to surfers.”

How it works

The skill has a catalog of Surfline’s daily reports, which include surf conditions, wave height, wind, tide and water temperature data for thousands of surf spots.  For the moment, the reports are limited to spots in the United States.

It works on any Alexa-enabled device, such as Echo devices, Fire TV with Alexa remotes and Fire tablets.

In addition to surf height, users can request: “Alexa, ask Surfline for the wind at Malibu,” or “Alexa, ask Surfline for the tide at Trestles.” The skill launches when a user says “Alexa, open Surfline.” Saying “Alexa, ask Surfline for help” will bring up the voice of lead forecaster Kevin Wallis, who will talk users through directions.

“Voice interface, it’s sort of astounding, for certain tasks for quarries it is so much easier to ask then to touch your way through the experience, typing it in,” Garrett said. “Voice is just the next  step on that curve. To me, it’s the jump from mouse to touch, it’s that significant… l think we’ll find it’s one big step, in many steps to follows.”