Paul was born in Berlin, Germany, but moved with his parents to Sagres in 1999, where he started to catch his first waves. He studies Micro – and Nanotecnology in Lisbon since 2007.

Paul’s favourite manoeuvres are tubes and frontside carves, and he’s working hard on learning new tricks, except the chop-hop, in his opinion an absolutely stupid manoeuvre,” basically just an Ollie”.

Despite studying full time, he still manages to find time to surf in the Lisbon area, preferably beachbreaks and points, train hard, and work with photographer Tiago Miguel Costa. He’ just returned from a trip to Morocco with O’Neill, where he will surf with Corey Lopes, Shaun Cansdell and Mark Matthews, as well as the other riders from the European team.

His 2011 goals are to become German Surfing Champion, compete in Portuguese National Contests and travel extensively for surf. He draws inspiration from Kelly’s surfing and life approach, how he has raised the performance bar for the sport. He also is plotting a new small wave design with Gero, to tackle the 2011 small wave season.

Photos courtesy of Lars Jacobsen.