Maui native Ian Walsh has been tackling massive waves around the world since he was a teenager and his longevity and experience in the water shines through, whether he’s in an elite contest, performing for the cameras, or purely riding for himself. He’s one of the most passionate and dedicated big-wave surfers, and he’s willing to go to the ends of the Earth to find the perfect wave.

Walsh first surfed the legendary Jaws when he was just 16. At 19, he was runner up at the Billabong XXL Awards after riding a 68-foot beast at Jaws and numerous other nominations followed.

Walsh competed in surf contests for years and excelled at many of them, but contests never left him feeling fulfilled. So he switched his focus and became mainly a freesurfer, whose job was to find the most epic waves and get there when the timing was just right, capturing his exploits in film and photos. He’s ridden everything from Jaws at its most rugged to a maxed-out Teahupo’o in Tahiti, to an enormous swell off the coast of West Africa.

The thing that drives his journey to the next big wave? It’s pyschological and it runs deep within him. “The reason I surf big waves is because I feel like I’m using every skill and every experience I’ve had in the ocean, both good and bad, and I’m condensing that into this one brief moment,” Walsh says. “It’s the pinnacle of what I can do in the ocean. I’m using everything I’ve learned from a lifetime of being in the ocean and I’m boiling it down to those few seconds before you get into a big wave.”

In 2014, Walsh showed up at one of the largest days at Jaws he’d seen in years. He was there to surf, naturally, but also to film a shot for the remake of Point Break, the legendary 1991 surf movie that he, of course, watched as a youth.

When he’s not filming for Hollywood movies or travelling the world to exotic beach locations, Walsh hasn’t forgotten his roots. In 2003, he launched the Ian Walsh Menehune Mayhem Surf Event, a youth surf contest that honours the up-and-coming surf talent in Maui, as well as their academic achievements. The event has continued for over a decade and in addition to awarding top surfing, it also honours athletes with the highest grade point averages. “Menehune Mayhem is probably my biggest accomplishment,” he says.