GALVESTON BAY, - The hull of an approaching oil tanker appears on the horizon of Galveston Bay, a mammoth gift in murky waters for surfers James Fulbright and John Benson.

The towering ship is trailed by a thin line of white water nearly four or five city blocks long, about 4 feet high.

"I think we're ready to rock 'n' roll on this one," Fulbright said, peering through binoculars.

"Let's do it," Benson said.

The laid-back vibe quickly disappears, and Fulbright kicks his boat into gear. The boat slams against the water, and, in a few minutes, Fulbright has maneuvered it into the path of the wave as Benson waits, prone on his surfboard.

Surf's up!

Fulbright and Benson, along with a tight-knit crew of surfer friends, have discovered an unusual way to catch a wave, taking advantage of the waist-high wake from massive ships and tankers that plow their way to ports along the Texas coast with bellies full of oil.

The ships keep surfers riding in lean times along the western Gulf Coast, where the waves aren't always so swell.

"We could be the rare breed who could surf every day because of man's greed for oil and gas," Fulbright said. "We're tapping a resource that would normally go untapped."

With surfing under his belt on the North Shore of Maui, Kenya and Western Australia during more than 30 years, Fulbright and his buddies finally found an unlikely nirvana in the waters of Galveston Bay.

Fulbright, a local surf shop owner, came up with the idea about a decade ago when he was working in a surfboard fin factory. He overheard a couple of sailors talking about how a passing tanker had swamped their boats with water.

"That got me curious about it. I started investigating it after that," he said.

After hanging out at a local tanker pilot hangout, reading every navigational map he could find and pestering local fishermen into telling him the spots with the best waves, Fulbright rediscovered the art of tanker surfing, lost since the 1970s.

Continued...

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