Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable

There's so many good waves,

I just want to surf 'em all.

You were out surfing

and you were attacked by a 14-foot tiger shark.

Did you ever, ever for one moment,

think you wouldn't go back in the water?

Exciting news, Bethany Hamilton

gets the wild card.

This is the first time we've seen Bethany

on the Championship Tour.

The obvious question is why,

why get back on the board again?

The Climate Prediction Center

has issued an El Nino advisory.

This could be a hurricane season

for the record books.

Also looking more likely

-with the latest forecast. -

Surf's up and we're talking extreme.

A solid run of northwesterly swells

will charge Hawaii starting on the last day of 2015

and continuing right into the first several days

of the new year.

Hey, Bethany.

Hey, Kevin, I really want to tow Jaws.

It looks like there's a lot of swell on the horizon.

Yeah, this storm is kind of in that classic spot,

so this next one looks like maybe 50 foot Hawaiian,

so it looks good.

I think you always have some wave or experience in mind

that you're hoping to get.

You only actually get that experience or that wave

probably only a handful of times in your whole life.

But you're always chasing that.

And she has really high standards.

Jaws is one of the most iconic waves in the world.

And it's a wave I've always dreamed of surfing.

There's nothing else that I've ever seen

or experienced that even comes close to that wave.

And that's what draws us all there.

Year after year, swell after swell.

When she said she wanted to do Jaws,

I had no idea what she wanted to do.

Cool, Jaws, go for it.

Sounds fun.

That's radical.

I surfed out there two or three times,

that place is so scary.

Yeah, I don't think she needs to do that.

-Oh, my gosh. -

When you're in impact zone,

you seriously think you're gonna die.

The ocean, when it's at its biggest

and wildest states, there's really no other playing field

like it in any sport and that's what drives these people.

They want to push the boundaries of possibility.

We're tracking swells and we're just watching clips

of amazing waves and perfect conditions.

When we saw the perfect swell,

okay we got to go to Maui like tomorrow.

The anticipation was really kind of intense.

When you green light a project,

boom, everything has to go into play all the moving parts.

The boats, the skis, the people, everyone's flying in,

you got to make sure everything's set up right logistically.

It's calculated chaos.

I was working with DK and Shaun,

and they're like the top guys out there,

helping with safety on big gnarly days.

If someone tells you they're not scared out there,

then they're completely lying.

Everyone's scared, you're nervous, your level of stress

is through the roof, you're anxious.

You're trying to stay calm. You don't want to get

your heart rate up.

I'm like shaking trying to talk about it.

It starts to hit home, like we're going out there.

We're gonna go see this monster of a wave.

It was like a noise I'd never heard before

coming out of the bowel of the ocean.

It was like, whoa, this place is crazy.

It feels and sounds like an avalanche

when the waves break.

With the helicopters flying around

and the drones and the jet skis and the boats

and all of the stuff that's happening,

it just becomes so busy and there's so much energy.

And then these giant sets come through

and people are wiping out.

All this really radical stuff's happening,

it's like I don't think there's anywhere in the world

that's so intense.

Sup guys!

-Hey! It's firing. - Yeah?

It's kind of slow, but it's good.

-Yeah! -Let's go Bethany.

we'll go check it out up close.

Okay.

It's literally the most beautiful wave to see in person.

It's mesmerizing.

But like you almost don't want to watch it too long

because it's just such a big scary wave.

You decide to go out there, you decide to take that wave

and there's implications in that.

There's a ton of risk.

911, what's your emergency?

I heard a big scream over there at the west reef

like a fright scream.

And then this thing came out, I saw it coming

underneath the water, he turned about where my

wife is, about that far away

and you could see his tail.

We look over by West Reef

and they were all going in.

He goes fuck, someone got bit over there,

we heard screaming you know

and they all went in.

And we worked our way over slowly looking for it.

I went in to see her.

She was as white as a sheet of paper.

I mean she was like white from loss of blood

and I look down and her arm is gone and it blew my mind.

Heaviest moment of my life.

Just to see that.

It was pretty heavy, but I was so thankful she was alive.

Being her positive self she looks at me

and she goes, "Don't worry Dad, I'm gonna be okay."

You know?

One of the stories this morning was that you were

a sure bet to go professional.

That was pretty much my dream.

Yeah, it was really hard to try to figure out, you know,

what the future held.

Everything that we had been working toward as a family,

all the successes and a room full of trophies,

everything we just saw it all gone,

and, uh,

now what?

So did they tell you what's ahead for you from here?

I don't know.

My love for surfing started

on the North Shore of Kauai in Hanalei Bay.

My mom was queen of Hanalei.

She charged and had that passion for surfing bigger waves.

I'd see her surfing, she'd be out usually before I was.

I first noticed him because he

had a really nice Volkswagen van.

That caught my eye.

- -

Everything was designed around taking care of the family

and having time to surf.

We were just so happy.

For us it was the ultimate dream

to be able to surf with your kids.

Bethany.

Wave to Daddy.

When she was six or seven, I would go out

and push her in the waves.

When she caught her first wave on her own,

it was a breaking point where she knew she could do it.