Mikala Jones, a professional surfer known for his photography and videos filmed from inside the tight tubes of breaking waves, has died after an accident while he was surfing in Indonesia, his family said.
His father, John Jones, told The Associated Press that his son, 44, was out on the waves on Sunday during a trip to the Mentawai Islands off the western coast of Sumatra when the fin on his surfboard sliced his femoral artery, which supplies blood to the lower limbs.
This week, the online surfing world mourned a member of its tribe and circulated some of his most popular works, including a photograph that showed him peering through the barrel of a breaking wave as he rode it into an opening of sunlight.
In one of Mr. Jones’s last Instagram posts, he filmed himself standing up on a surfboard as the walls of a wave folded around him. “Time to live,” he wrote. Besides his wife and children, he said, surfing was “all I need.”
Isabella Jones, one of his daughters, and professional surfers wrote messages on social media about Mr. Jones, who grew up on the east side of Oahu, Hawaii, and later lived in Indonesia with his wife, Emma Brereton, Isabella and another daughter, Violet.
Keala Ashton, Mr. Jones’s nephew, was surfing with him in the isolated region when he was…
