Carissa Moore Has The Secret To Going Pro | Ep. 2 | Surf Girls: Kaikaina

Someone who has supported me through kind of the tough times I think is definitely Carissa. My surfing heroes are definitely Carissa. Carissa. Carissa Moore. Watching her compete and bring surfing to the next level as a female athlete is very inspiring. It helps us just know like hey we can shoot for the stars too. My name is Carissa Kainani Moore. I'm from Honolulu, Hawaii and I'm a professional surfer. Surfing gives me purpose. It gives me something to wake up and chase after every day. Especially over the last few years just seen like this boom of girls and females in the ocean and it's just so exciting to see the girls are getting after it and I just remember when I was little I was sometimes the only female in the lineup. Becoming a professional athlete of any sort it just takes a lot of commitment and with that commitment comes sacrifice. I definitely wouldn't have known all the things that it takes to be the best at something. As much as there's going to be celebration there's going to be a lot of hard work. There's a million people who want to be the best and one of them will. I surf because it's a part of me. It's just something that's inside of me. It's like in my DNA. It connects me to like my culture, to my ancestors, to the ocean, to Hawaii. It gives me my identity. It makes me who I am especially like getting barreled. That's the most intimate thing you could do in the ocean. You're literally surrounded by the ocean in the barrel. It feels like everything's in slow motion. You're like watching little droplets of water falling from the wave. You're just blown away at the beauty. And then you come out and when you come out it literally feels like you're on top of the moon. It just gives you this burst of energy that you never knew you had and it just like gives you so much like in Hawaiian mana which is power and energy and it just makes you feel this type of that nothing else can make you feel like. And this is why in Hawaiian culture it's so important to be connected to the ocean this way. Like the ocean is what fuels us with this mana, this power, and this energy. Oli is basically chanting and in every oli there's kauna which is like a hidden meaning. There's actually like a chance for calling waves in and so I think it's super cool and very important that we bring that back and we influence the outside world other than Hawai'i about what we did when we started surfing. So surfing started in Polynesia. Supposedly they didn't stand up surf. They prone surf so they're on their bellies. Then from there you know Hawaiians they're the Polynesians that really perfected surfing. A lot of Hawaiian queens were unbelievable at surfing. In the old days it was actually a cultural practice. When missionaries came they influenced our culture on it in a big way and changed a lot of it around. Surfing was pretty much like ban hula. Land got taken away, the language was taken too. So that's how so many Hawaiians don't surf anymore. I think generational trauma could definitely be a huge aspect of why there aren't as many surfers, Hawaiian surfers nowadays. I think that there's like a stereotype. A lot of people think that living in Hawai'i is like paradise but I don't really think that's realistic. It's not just blue waters and rainbows all day long. I think a lot of people just forgot about the origins of surfing. Not many people talk about it and not many people really care to know. Educating themselves about the history, the rich history, and realizing how sacred this like art is to the Hawaiian people and all of Polynesia. It feels good that I have the freedom to do those things. Things that were once taken away so it's a good feeling. Growing up I didn't have that many friends that were Native Hawaiian that surfed with me so it's really special that I'm surrounded by so many surfers that are Native Hawaiian girls. Being able to be around people that don't only share surfing but also share the Hawaiian culture, the Hawaiian language, and other stuff is very powerful. We can come together as a strong force.