I Surfed for Twelve Years Without Ear Protection. Then I Learned What That Feeling Actually Was.

You know the feeling. You come out of the water, tilt your head to the right, give it a few shakes, wait for that dull, muffled pressure to clear. Maybe you hop on one foot for good measure. Then you do it again after the next session, and the one after that, and at some point you stop thinking about it because every surfer you know does exactly the same thing.

I did it for twelve years. Surfing the north Cornwall coast, the Gower in Wales, winter swells off Croyde. Cold, grey, beautiful water. Every session ended the same way. Head down, ear to shoulder, waiting for it to drain.

Then last autumn I noticed it wasn’t draining the same way. The muffled sensation was lasting longer. I was asking people to repeat themselves more often. I put it down to a bad ear infection at first, then went to see my GP, who referred me to a specialist, who said something I haven’t forgotten since.

“That feeling isn’t water. It’s exostosis. Bone growth. And you’ve been building it since your first cold-water session.”

I’d never heard the term surfer’s ear before that appointment. The specialist walked me through it. Repeated exposure to cold water and wind causes the ear canal to grow new bone as a protective response. It happens slowly, invisibly, over years. By the time you notice the symptoms, the growth is already significant. The only treatment, once it progresses far enough, is surgery.

I walked out of that clinic thinking about every surfer I knew who did the same head-tilt ritual. Every one of them building the same problem, season by season, none of them knowing it.

Then a Mate Mentioned a Brand I’d Never Come Across

I’d tried foam earplugs in the water years ago and binned them after two sessions. They fell out during duck dives. They let water in anyway. One pair caused a minor infection because I kept reinserting them with wet hands. I’d written off ear protection in surf as a problem nobody had solved.

A friend who surfs Perranporth most weekends mentioned he’d been using something called Bollsen Watersafe+. He’d picked them up after his own consultation about early-stage exostosis. He said they stayed in through wipeouts on overhead sets. He said they were the first earplugs he’d actually forgotten he was wearing.

I was sceptical. But I was also looking at a potential surgery bill and a condition that would only get worse if I kept surfing unprotected. I ordered a pair.

The first thing I noticed was the design. Not a foam cylinder. Not a standard flanged tip. A dual-flange silicone earplug, medical-grade, built specifically for water. Proper carry case. Instructions that actually explained how to fit them for a seal. It felt like something made by people who understood what happens inside a wave.

So What Exactly Are These?

Bollsen Watersafe+ (HP-050) are medical-grade silicone earplugs built for water sports. The dual-flange design creates a waterproof seal rated to 3 metres depth, so they hold through duck dives, wipeouts, and shore break poundings, not just gentle laps in a heated pool.

The silicone is BPA-free, PVC-free, and latex-free. They’re reusable and washable, with a lifespan of up to 100 uses per pair. Each pair comes in a compact aluminium travel case, the kind of thing you’d actually keep in your wetsuit bag rather than lose at the bottom of it. The noise reduction is rated at 24 dB, which cuts wind noise and the roar of breaking water without killing your spatial awareness. You can still hear people calling to you in the line-up.

They’re also one of the very few earplugs independently certified and lab-tested in Germany (PZT GmbH, Notified Body No. 1974), which matters when you’re relying on them to keep cold Atlantic water out of your ear canal, session after session, winter and summer.

The First Session. No Head-Tilt. No Shake. Nothing to Drain.

I drove down to Sennen on a grey November morning, wind out of the south-west, chest-high sets. The kind of conditions where you take a few on the head and spend as much time underwater as above it. Not a gentle first test.

Coming in after two hours, I realised I hadn’t done the ritual. Hadn’t even thought about it. My ears felt normal. Not blocked, not muffled, not pressured. I shook the water off my hood, unzipped, and that was it. The sensation I’d had after every surf session of my adult life simply wasn’t there.

Same thing the following week, and the week after. By the third session I’d stopped paying attention because there was nothing to pay attention to. That’s honestly the best way I can describe what good ear protection feels like: the absence of the thing you’d stopped noticing was wrong.

My follow-up appointment three months later showed no progression in the exostosis. That’s the outcome you’re hoping for. Not reversal (that’s what surgery is for, if it comes to it) but stopping the clock on something that had been ticking for over a decade without my knowing.

Why Watersafe+ Works When Standard Earplugs Don’t

Standard foam earplugs are designed to reduce noise in dry conditions. They compress to fit, which gives you a reasonable acoustic seal but a poor water seal. The moment you duck-dive or take a wave on the head, the foam compresses further, the seal shifts, and water gets in. They weren’t engineered for surf. Watersafe+ was.

The dual-flange silicone design creates two independent sealing points inside the ear canal. Even if external pressure shifts the outer flange, the inner flange holds the waterproof barrier. The material is soft enough to wear through a full session without pressure discomfort, but firm enough to stay put through violent water movement. And because it’s medical-grade silicone rather than foam, it doesn’t absorb bacteria or break down the way disposable plugs do after repeated wet use.

Here’s what you actually get:

✅ Waterproof seal rated to 3 metres depth, designed to hold through duck dives and wipeouts
✅ Dual-flange silicone construction, medical-grade, BPA-free, PVC-free, latex-free
✅ 24 dB noise reduction, independently certified by PZT GmbH (German lab, Notified Body No. 1974)
✅ Reusable up to 100 times, washable, includes aluminium travel case
✅ Prevents swimmer’s ear and reduces the cold-water stimulus that drives surfer’s ear (exostosis)
✅ Trusted by 1,000,000+ people across Europe
✅ 40-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked

What Other Surfers Are Saying

So Why Don’t More Surfers Know About These?

Bollsen started in Munich and built its reputation across Europe through word of mouth rather than mass retail. You won’t find them in a pharmacy or a high-street surf shop. Part of that is distribution, part is quality control. The brand sells direct, which means it can hold the product standard without the cost pressures of retail margins.

Surfer’s ear awareness in the UK is genuinely improving, partly because the surf community here is larger and older than it used to be, and partly because more people are getting diagnoses and asking their consultants what they should have done differently. The answer is almost always ear protection on every cold-water session, from the start, not once the bone growth is already visible on a scan.

Watersafe+ has been picked up by cold-water swimmers, triathletes, open-water swimmers, and kayakers across the UK coast for the same reason it works for surfers: it was built for real water conditions, not added to a hearing protection catalogue as an afterthought.

Try Them Risk-Free for 40 Days

Bollsen offers a 40-day money-back guarantee on every pair. That’s more than five weeks of surfing. If you go out on a double-overhead day off the North Devon coast and they fall out, or if you’re simply not happy with them, you send them back and get a full refund. No forms, no friction, no “terms apply” small print.

The reason they can offer that is the return rate. The AR KI TECH fit service uses photos of your ears to match you to the correct size before shipping, and has brought their return rate down to around 3%. The industry average for earplugs is 15 to 20%. When a product fits correctly, most people keep it.

At £26.95 for up to 100 uses, the cost per session works out to less than 27p. For the most important bit of kit you take into the water, the maths is straightforward. Your ears don’t recover from exostosis without surgery. Watersafe+ costs less than a surf lesson.

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