Tony Butt has a PhD in Physical Oceanography and worked part time with the Coastal Processes Research Group at the University of Plymouth for about ten years. He now makes a meagre living writing about waves and the coastal environment for the non-scientific audience.  He has had a regular column in the Surfers Path magazine since its foundation in 1997 and has published hundreds of other articles on waves and the coastal environment. He is the author of Surf Science: an Introduction to Waves for Surfing (2004) and The Surfers Guide to Waves, Coasts and Climates (2009), in addition to numerous chapters, forewords and contributions to other books.

He also works with NGOs like Surfers Against Sewage and Save the Waves, trying to convince 

people that the coastline is one of the most delicate and poorly-understood parts of Nature, and that the more we interfere with it, the more problems it will cause us. He is also a Surfing Ambassador at Patagonia.

Tony has surfed hundreds of different spots around the world, and in the last 15 years or so become a respected big-wave surfer. He dislikes crowds, contests, towsurfing and the intrusion of greed and materialism into the world of surfing.  Despite that, he has been invited to several international big-wave events, including the Big Wave Africa contest at Dungeons and being pre-selected for the Eddie Aikau.  He has also appeared in several UK and international television documentaries on big-wave surfing.

He lives most of the year in a forgotten corner of Northwest Spain, where he has recently been pioneering a couple of new big-wave spots. He makes one long-haul flight a year, to spend the southern winter in Cape Town, South Africa.