How to pronounce “cortes” in English

My god, that's an amazing city.When Cortes arrived and they saw Mexico City, at that time it was in the Valley of Mexico.You know this-- because he's from Mexico.

I have." Whether or not he is buried in Wilmington actually remains a mystery. He had been buried in Yerba Buena which no longer a cemetery. So moving forward in time. Okay. Who elsewent to the Cortes Bank? What are some other stories? There were several stories in the Los Angeles Times during the 20s and 30s about coast surveyors and fishermen who really starteddiscovering the waters off the bank. But then in 1957, Mel Fisher, who some of you guys may know is the discoverer of the richest treasure on the sea floor off of Florida.

And that was actually on the day that he found the treasure. So, I wanted to know, "Who was the first person to surf out there?" Who was actually the first person to catch a waveoff the Cortes bank? I'm not going to say definitively that the gentleman in the center of this photo is the guy who discovered, who first surfed out there, but I think it's verypossible. His name is Harrison Ealey, and he is an absolute hoot. He lives in Oceanside; he is a real adventurer who spent his early years sailing between Mexico, Hawaii, and

to surf out there, they better bring the "blanking" Pope along to pray for them." And, of course, eventually guys did. Here's a shot from the air of one of Flame's 17 or 18 flyovers atvarious times at Cortes Bank on swells. He became just obsessed, just fixated trying to figure out when the Cortes Bank broke the best. What were the best conditions? As thesurfers in this crowd would agree, these are not ideal conditions for Cortes bank. This is actually not a huge swell by Cortes standards. And it's pretty windy and choppy out there,

there. And Evan Slater is about a hundred yards to the side of him about to wear this wave on the head. Eventually Mike and Brad traded places and this is Mike's first everride at Cortes. Let me back up to what Rob Brown told me about this, because it's pretty funny. "I was just sitting there click click click watching the counter godown frame by frame telling myself, "Relax, Mike is going to die right here right now but you're going to do your job." . Rob's job was to capture Mike's first ever

down frame by frame telling myself, "Relax, Mike is going to die right here right now but you're going to do your job." . Rob's job was to capture Mike's first everworld record ride at Cortes Bank. This was the aerial photo of that same wave. You can see this tiny little speck . And that's Mike Parsons. I believe Skinny you had a ring sideseat to this wave, yeah? This is Mike's proud mama. This is some footage That

really took off. In 2003 Mike Parsons and brad tapped Greg Long and his brother Rustyto go out to Cortes on a sort of similar size swell but on a day that was even glassier and cleaner literally a surreal day when the ocean was just calm as a mirror and Rob Brownwas fortunate to get the call to haul him out there. This is Rob's photo that also became

I would point out, you know, these guys are surfing over the hull of the Jalisco. So that ship provides a hazard kind of unlike most other surf spots I've ever seen anywhere.This is him at Cortes. This is video I shot. This just gives you an idea rolling towards

I would point out, you know, these guys are surfing over the hull of the Jalisco. So that ship provides a hazard kind of unlike most other surf spots I've ever seen anywhere.Chris: And Cortes does barrel. Sometimes it's generally more on the inside. As you saw on the wave that Greg rode . The wave will come into the inside slam certain parts

And they basically didn't find any treasure. But this was the start of Mel Fisher's career.And his first mission was Cortes Bank. I thought this was a funny picture. This was provided to me by Jimmy Buffet, graciously. This is Mel Fisher on July 20, 1985, sitting atopgold and silver bars at the Atocha. While Jimmy sings "A Pirate looks at 40".

you can imagine what 112-footer must have looked like. But it swept beneath him and the ship surfed down it for awhile and then it kept going. And then so what happens whena wave like that hits the Cortes Bank? This was a graphic provided to me courtesy of Sean Collins in surf line. Here we see the Bishop Rock. And the way that it sort of sticks upout here. But then you see this abyssal drop off of the Cortes bank. It goes -- it drops down as I said to 6,000 feet. So a wave that comes up has nowhere to go up but up because

Greg Long and Mike Parsons were able to convince Rob Brown to take his boat out into the teeth of that storm in gale force winds in the hope that they would be able to get a brief windowof calm weather out atop the Cortes Bank. The data buoys offshore had recorded the biggest swell ever hitting them. Greg and the boys -- Greg and Mike and Brad and Greg's bestfriend Twiggy Baker had to see it and Rob Brown was scared to death.

I would point out, you know, these guys are surfing over the hull of the Jalisco. So that ship provides a hazard kind of unlike most other surf spots I've ever seen anywhere.on the Rob's boat at Cortes too, thinking, "oh my gosh, I hope he knows what he's doing." This is Shane Dorian who has recently been captured along with Greg and some of the boys

I would point out, you know, these guys are surfing over the hull of the Jalisco. So that ship provides a hazard kind of unlike most other surf spots I've ever seen anywhere.Jeff: What is Waimea compared to Cortes or Mavericks?

I would point out, you know, these guys are surfing over the hull of the Jalisco. So that ship provides a hazard kind of unlike most other surf spots I've ever seen anywhere.close to as big as Mavericks or Cortes, but Cortes and Mavericks -- there's no limit to how big. You know, Waimea is in a small bay and you know these open ocean waves have much

Your crossover-- you know how Ricky Martin did the crossover from Spanish to English at the Grammys.We're going to talk about a JW Cortes crossover from the military to your acting career, because that's fascinating, and not a lot of actorscome with your background.

I used some Google in some ways -- it was pretty cool. This book is -- obviously,it's called Ghost Wave: The Discovery of Cortes Bank and the Biggest Wave on Earth. And I became really fascinated in the Bank early on in 2001 after a group of guys that -- oneof whom is here, up here in the front with me -- went out. And the photographer -- actually, two guys are here, Photographer Rob Brown and Ken "Skin-Dog" Collins who is a well-known

Flame eyeballed this spot off the California coast -- way off the California coast. You can see this is southern California right here. San Clemente. Catalina, San Nicholas.Then I'm going to zoom and show you the Cortes and Tanner Banks. These are really strange underwater features. They're essentially sunken Channel Islands. They're not little sea mounts.They're really big. If you were to measure Cortes from here to here the shoal stretch it's about 15 miles long and the waters off of Cortes drop off to 1,000 fathoms or 6,000

as "one of the most fantastic feelings. We had found Flame's Moby Dick." In researching the history of the bank, I think it was a geologist or an archaeologist, I can't rememberwhich who actually pointed out to me that Cortes was actually an island not very long ago. As recently as 10,000 years ago, it was a big island. It was about 14 miles long.And it's very likely that it would have been walked upon hunted upon by the native Americans who lived on San Clemente island 40 miles away. They regularly paddled these huge distances

map. That's because when Mr. Gavitak was mapping the sea floor, he actually had a whale flip off his sonar sounder, so he wasn't able to get there the whole way. I, obviously, wasinterested in the history of who discovered the Cortes Bank. When was -- why is it named what it is, etc. The general truth that's accepted is that a ship called a Cortes, aside-wheel steamer that passed along the coast in the 1850s carrying 49ers to San Francisco, was the first ship to ever seen waves atop the bank. This is an ad actually from the

it was January fifth of 1846 --as they left Monterey Bay and sailed south, they discovered breakers bearing northeast about ten miles distant. And this would have been a time thatyou would have seen big waves on the Cortes Bank. So I kind of postulate that the bank should actually be called the Constitution Bank, because it was discovered by Old Ironsides,which is still afloat in Philadelphia today. The other real interesting story, at least to me, was, "Okay. If the Bishop didn't actually hit the rock, then maybe it should be named

discovering the waters off the bank. But then in 1957, Mel Fisher, who some of you guys may know is the discoverer of the richest treasure on the sea floor off of Florida.He launched his first major treasure hunting expedition off to Cortes. And I was actually able to locate the reporter who went out with him on that journey and we talked about it.And it turned into just a complete fiasco. Their boat almost sank on several occasions.

I would point out, you know, these guys are surfing over the hull of the Jalisco. So that ship provides a hazard kind of unlike most other surf spots I've ever seen anywhere.unsurfable wave. Whereas Cortes Bank right off the side starts to drop off thousands of feet of water. Mavericks I think it's close to 100 feet right off the side which in turn

I would point out, you know, these guys are surfing over the hull of the Jalisco. So that ship provides a hazard kind of unlike most other surf spots I've ever seen anywhere.With air you can actually go to some place like Cortes and survive something you normally wouldn't survive with that equipment.

these guys have done through the years conquering big waves around the world.So I'll start with showing you a pulled back picture of this wave on Cortes, January 2008.This is actually stretched a bit. So this wave is actually bigger than this. If you were looking at it in a real regular perspective -- perhaps -- I don't know -- 65, 70 feet

pulled these perfect "off the lips". We tried to buy him but he outsurfed us so bad that it just didn't matter. Well, in 2001, after several aborted missions, the conditions finallycame together for Mike and the boys to maybe go out to Cortes Bank. And Mike had just been obsessed big wave surfer. This is him at Todos Santos this is one of the first bona fidebig waves that it realized existed off the California coast. Of course Mavericks would soon follow. Mike was enemies with this guy, Brad Gerlach. Mike was sort of

I would point out, you know, these guys are surfing over the hull of the Jalisco. So that ship provides a hazard kind of unlike most other surf spots I've ever seen anywhere.top of the wave over. And Cortes bank it comes up smoother. So the breaking area -- if a

I would point out, you know, these guys are surfing over the hull of the Jalisco. So that ship provides a hazard kind of unlike most other surf spots I've ever seen anywhere.I can't say this definitively but when a big wave sweeping over Cortes has been slowed a bit, but it's -- the wave itself is probably moving between 45, 50 miles an hour if not

And everybody laughed. Now I'm making that book.And I have an idea of, at the beginning-- and I always said that when Hernan Cortes came to Mexico

high. This is Grant Banker, who is one of Greg's best friends, he's a South African.And he's also very well-known in the Mavericks community. The Cortes Bank is a really unusualunderwater feature. And it was first explored by sort of the group of surfers who now go

Then I'm going to zoom and show you the Cortes and Tanner Banks. These are really strange underwater features. They're essentially sunken Channel Islands. They're not little sea mounts.They're really big. If you were to measure Cortes from here to here the shoal stretch it's about 15 miles long and the waters off of Cortes drop off to 1,000 fathoms or 6,000feet. What that translates into for a surfer is a spot that's capable of taking wave energy and focusing it almost like a lens -- like sunlight through a magnifying glass

This is Christian and Nathan Fletcher's great uncle; he passed away this past year. And he was a renowned big wave surfer. One of the first people to surf a frightening waveoff a westernmost point of Oahu called Kaena Point. Flippy used to fish of the Cortes Bank in the 50s for abalone. He would join a number of other big wave surfers. They could get6 dollars or so per abalone so they were pulling in pretty good money because you could pull in 50 or 60 dozen abalone in a day. Flippy described the bank "It was a very rough place

in the middle of the open ocean. It's very difficult to even catch a wave out there much less try to predict where the next one is going to come from. As you can imagine theyalso got steam-rolled by several sets. This is generally considered as small as Cortes is able to break. This is maybe 8 feet. What surfers would consider 8 feet from top tobottom. If it's any smaller than this the waves just sort of generally pass over the bank and don't even break. They just continue on to California. Sam George described it

Bruce. I think, well, his last name is Taggard, I don't remember his first name. He says, "It sounds fantastic but we've consulted experts in international law. They say there's nothingto prevent us from starting our own country if we want to. The Cortes Bank is in international waters on the shelf and beyond the U.S. or Mexican jurisdiction." So essentially theidea was they were going to take a bunch of rocks out and sink them until Cortes Bank was again an island for the first time in thousands

to prevent us from starting our own country if we want to. The Cortes Bank is in international waters on the shelf and beyond the U.S. or Mexican jurisdiction." So essentially theidea was they were going to take a bunch of rocks out and sink them until Cortes Bank was again an island for the first time in thousandsof years, plant a flag on it and declare territorial waters all the way around the Cortes Bank, which would give them potentially huge lucrative fishing rights because it's one of the most

idea was they were going to take a bunch of rocks out and sink them until Cortes Bank was again an island for the first time in thousandsof years, plant a flag on it and declare territorial waters all the way around the Cortes Bank, which would give them potentially huge lucrative fishing rights because it's one of the mostprolific fisheries in the Pacific. So the guy who actually hatched this plan was an actor named Joe Kirkwood. He was sort of a B movie actor who played a boxer Joe Palooka

a wave like that hits the Cortes Bank? This was a graphic provided to me courtesy of Sean Collins in surf line. Here we see the Bishop Rock. And the way that it sort of sticks upout here. But then you see this abyssal drop off of the Cortes bank. It goes -- it drops down as I said to 6,000 feet. So a wave that comes up has nowhere to go up but up becauseit's been coursing through the ocean at 1,000 feet depth. And it climbs these stair steps off Bishop Rock and can become essentially what is generally recognized now as the biggest,

various times at Cortes Bank on swells. He became just obsessed, just fixated trying to figure out when the Cortes Bank broke the best. What were the best conditions? As thesurfers in this crowd would agree, these are not ideal conditions for Cortes bank. This is actually not a huge swell by Cortes standards. And it's pretty windy and choppy out there,but you can see the right-handed wave just peeling off in the distance. And that's what these guys are after out there. You see two waves following each other in succession.

The waters were so shifty and there was so much current. And the waves come -- at a spot like Mavericks -- these guys can explain it better, but a spot like Mavericks the wavestend to break at a very set spot. At Cortes, they can break 100 yards farther down the reef and absolutely just leave these guys scratching for the horizon and bailing theirboards as you can see here. I think we have Greg either here or here getting ready to get obliterated and Peter Mel paddling for the shoulder. And I want to thank Jason who

I would point out, you know, these guys are surfing over the hull of the Jalisco. So that ship provides a hazard kind of unlike most other surf spots I've ever seen anywhere.before so they wanted to see if it was possible to surf Mavericks and then make it down to Cortes. And they proved that indeed it was. These are some shots that Jason took. This

I would point out, you know, these guys are surfing over the hull of the Jalisco. So that ship provides a hazard kind of unlike most other surf spots I've ever seen anywhere.Jeff: Yeah, Mavericks comes up much more abruptly where it's gradually comes up at Cortes bank. Mavericks because it comes up so abruptly, when he talks about the swell

Female Presenter: So welcome on behalf of Authors at Google. I'm really excited today to bring you Chris Dixon to discuss his new book Ghost Wave: The Discovery of Cortes Bankand the Biggest Wave on Earth. Chris is the founding editor of SurferMag.com. He once spent a year documenting the wild life of another author we've posted here, Jimmy Buffet.

This is a chart he drew early on where he was trying to -- it was just a hand drawn chart that looked at the chart guide where he was actually looking at the bathymetry-- the underwater topography figuring out, "Okay. What happens when a wave comes across the Cortes Bank ?" Ideal direction? Should it be a swell that comes from a storm wayup to the north? Should it be a storm to the south? Should it be a storm right off the California coast? And he kind of keeps the best of these angles a secret. Eventually,

Flame, Bill Sharp, Sam George and a pro from Laguna named George Hulse road out on an incrediblysecret mission. They didn't tell anybody. And this is George Hulse' first paddle in wave atop the Cortes Bay. There was no such thing as what's known as tow surfing todayback in 1990 when they road these waves. But you can imagine they're 100 miles out in the ocean. There's no land anywhere. All there is is this shallow sea mount. And they're

And it's very likely that it would have been walked upon hunted upon by the native Americans who lived on San Clemente island 40 miles away. They regularly paddled these huge distancesbetween all the Channel Islands. And so, it wouldn't have been a stretch at all for them to paddle along Tanner Island and Cortes Island. And here we see a map that shows us the contoursof the coast, 10 and 12,000 years ago. 12,000 years ago, all of the northern Channel Islands

-- Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, the ones off of Santa Barbara were a single island inhabited by a tribe of woolly mammoths that swam over there at some point in history. And then,this shows -- the black is 10,000 years ago. The gray is 12,000 years ago. There was even a tiny island that they called North Cortes 12,000 years ago. But 10,000 or so years agowas when native Americans would have first gone out there. They would have -- you know, they lived on San Clemente. And this is the western shoreline of San Clemente. And it

was when native Americans would have first gone out there. They would have -- you know, they lived on San Clemente. And this is the western shoreline of San Clemente. And itshows these million-year-old plus wave-scoured of San Clemente. This kind of gives you what the wave topography off of Cortes looks like. The varying sea levels throughthe millennia have created these stair steps. And each of these flat stair step spots is a spot where the sea level remained fairly constant for awhile and it scoured out these

Gavitak California State University Monterey Bay. They would have seen a hilltop about 100 foot high bluff in red. Then 75 to 100-foot high ring around a beautiful lagoon that wouldhave just been a paradisaical place to fish. There would have just been incredible sea life in that lagoon. And then this would have been looking from North Cortes to South Cortes.And you can see how quickly the sea floor drops off. Interestingly, this is the western plank of Cortes where the big swells approach from -- here you see some blank spots in the

have just been a paradisaical place to fish. There would have just been incredible sea life in that lagoon. And then this would have been looking from North Cortes to South Cortes.And you can see how quickly the sea floor drops off. Interestingly, this is the western plank of Cortes where the big swells approach from -- here you see some blank spots in themap. That's because when Mr. Gavitak was mapping the sea floor, he actually had a whale flip off his sonar sounder, so he wasn't able to get there the whole way. I, obviously, was