Man Sets Record Surfing Tallest Wave Ever

American pro surfer Garrett McNamera has done something no other man alive has done: surfed a 78-foot wave and lived to tell of it. Guinness World Record has declared McNamera's wave the tallest ever surfed, topping the previous record, held by legendary surfer Mike Parson, by just one foot, the Daily Mail reports. McNamera caught the wave off the coast of Portugal back in November—it was reported as 90 feet tall at the time—but it wasn't certified as a record until yesterday.

"It’s amazing we get to do what we do, I am so grateful," McNamera said at the Billabong XXL Global Big Wave awards in California. "When they announced my name I got a bigger rush than probably on all the waves I rode this year." McNamera went hunting for big waves in the area knowing there was a 1,000-foot-deep funnel-shaped underwater canyon there. "When there is a big swell it acts like an amplifier," he explained in an interview last year. (More Garrett McNamara stories.)