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Big-wave colossus located on the north coast of Maui in Hawaii; proving ground for tow-surfing, site of the first successfully ridden 35-foot wave, and ground zero for big-wave riding's paddle-in renaissance, starting in the early 2010s. "Before it was 'Jaws,'" Hawaiian surfer Gerry Lopez recalled, "we called it 'Atom Blaster' because it broke like an atomic bomb." Local surfers also know the break as Peahi, Hawaiian for "beckon."

Jaws comes alive only during the biggest North Pacific storms and is best from late fall to early spring. It begins to break at 12 feet, but doesn't take full form until 20 feet—an event that occurs about a half-dozen times a season—and will occasionally hit 40 feet or bigger. The leading edge of Jaws's spur-shaped lava reef is a half mile from shore, and the reef topography bends incoming waves into a classic "bowl" shape, which in turn produces a cyclonic right-breaking tube that can spit and grind for up to 200 yards. The left at Jaws is also ridden, but the shape is less predictable. Jaws is fronted by steep cliffs, adjacent to a grid of sugarcane fields.

For years, the sheer size of the waves, along with prohibitively strong tradewinds, kept Jaws from becoming a paddle-in surfing spot. It was first ridden in the late '80s and early '90s by a group of hardcore sailboarders, including Mike Waltz, Rush Randle, Mark and Josh Angulo, and Dave Kalama. Meanwhile, on the North Shore of Oahu in 1992, Hawaiian surfers Laird Hamilton, Buzzy Kerbox, and Darrick Doerner invented tow-in surfing. Hamilton and Kerbox moved to Maui the following year, converted some of the local wave-sailors into tow surfers, and dedicated themselves to riding giant waves at Jaws. It was here that tow surfing took its present-day form, with the use of personal watercraft (outboard inflatables had been used up to that point), along with the development of short, narrow, heavy surfboards equipped with footstraps.

The surf world at large got its first look at Jaws in the September 1994 issue of 

 magazine (although the break was identified only as a "heaving, deep-water outer reef in Maui"); a few weeks later, an extraordinary Jaws sequence was praised as the highlight of 

, Bruce Brown's new surf film. Muscle-bound Hamilton was by far the best surfer at Jaws, and while he rode the break with amazing strength and flair, he also respected its power. "It vaporized me," he said after one of his first wipeouts there. "I felt like my body went into little particles." In late 1994, Dave Kalama rode a Jaws wave measuring 30 or 35 feet—the biggest wave surfed up to that point.

In the early '10s however, Jaws was repurposed as a paddle-in break. Big-wave chargers like Shane Dorian, Mark Healey, Kohl Christensen, Greg Long and Ian Walsh, were regularly challenging the fearsome break with nothing more than a big-wave gun and their bare hands. “It’s so raw,” Healey told 

magazine when discussing the difference between paddle and tow-surfing at Jaws. "It’s like working behind enemy lines versus firing a mortar from five miles away."

Jaws is featured in dozens of surf videos, including 

(2011); Jaws was also seen in the 2008 IMAX movie 

. In 2002, Hamilton, Doerner, and Kalama stunt-surfed at Jaws in 

, a coffee-table photo book, was published in 1997. Hamilton was featured at the base of an enormous wave on the cover of the November 1998 issue of 

 for a story titled "Maui's Monster Waves: Jaws." 

, a cofee table photo book featuring the work of Eric Aeder, was published in 2013.

The debut Tow-In World Cup, the first contest of its kind, was held in 25 to 35-foot surf at Jaws in early 2002, with the $70,000 first-place prize going to the team of Garrett McNamara (Hawaii) and Rodrigo Resende (Brazil); Hamilton, then regarded as Jaws's dominant surfer, didn't enter the event. As of 2013, Jaws had also been the site of roughly a dozen Billabong XXL winning waves.

Peahi

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