A Fish of Turquoise Water fornt coverDecorative magazine overlayDecorative magazine overlay

A Fish of Turquoise Water

How William Aliotti’s unconventional lines took him from a small island in the Caribbean to a digitized global existence.

Publication
The Surfer's Journal 32.1 - Volume 32, Issue 1
Year
2023

EXAMINING TRAITS

Full disclosure: I don’t know what makes William Aliotti a great surfer.

Trying to find out, I hopped over to his island, French Saint-Martin, to spend time in his world and to meet his family, his friends, his mentors, and his longtime girlfriend, Sara. I surfed with him, laughed, and ate delightful French food, some of which he cooked himself because, as well as being a surfer with an uncanny eye, uncommon power, flow, and a missing fear gene, he cooks a damn good magret de canard.

I knew next to nothing about him before I went. Aliotti isn’t a surf superstar. He’s not Kelly, John John, or Gabby famous. Nor is he one of the recognized big-wave fraternity, scratching a living chasing giants. He’s not a Pipe master or a slab fiend, or a North Shore vlogger, like Nathan Florence and Koa Rothman.

He’s a type of freesurfer who may or may not be distinguishable to you, depending on your age and how much of your soul you give to Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. But he’s a surfer who has emerged from a tiny Caribbean island not known for its waves. He’s also someone people love to watch, and whose extreme, experimental, and close-to-perfect style is somehow relatable to you and me. If Curren is a god, Aliotti is one of the demigods. Supernatural, but more like us.

He’s of a generation that knows only an online communication sphere. His career is rooted in the cyberverse, the arc of his star largely seen as a trail of exploding clips and regular short films. He has a decent aggregate of followers (36,000) out there in the IG ether, and his YouTube videos—made in collaboration with filmmaker Miguel Claudeville Morell—regularly hit 40,000 to 50,000 views. His likes are high and his stuff gets shared among his audiences readily enough to reach his sponsors’ targeted eyeballs. So it’s his living: traveling the world, getting barreled, boosting huge airs, and hacking vicious turns. Just like he planned at 10 years old.

Categories: