Short ocean surface waves are important for remote sensing, air-sea
exchange, and underwater acoustics. The energy spectrum at scales much
shorter than the dominant waves are azimuthally bimodal. However, widely
used wave models fail to reproduce the bimodality of the short gravity
waves. Recent studies have shown that an azimuthally narrow dissipation
due to breaking can significantly improve model performance. Thus,
highlighting the importance of the directional energy balance of wave
models. We utilized stereo visible imagery to quantify the directional
wave-breaking kinematics and compare them against the energy spectrum
and different dissipation parameterizations and model solutions. The
results show that wave-breaking is azimuthally unimodal and narrower
than the bimodal energy spectrum, suggesting that wave-breaking
dissipation combines with the nonlinear energy fluxes due to wave-wave
interactions to yield enhanced bimodality. The findings are useful for
constraining energy dissipation parameterizations for spectral wave
models and improved understanding of air-sea fluxes.