January 2012 (ROTM#37) Rip Current Experiment at Shelly Beach, NSW

This fantastic picture was taken by Patrick Rynne and shows a bunch of intrepid rip current scientists, students and volunteers venturing out into the jaws of a nasty rip during an experiment at Shelly Beach on the Central Coast of New South Wales last December.

The people in the photo are carrying drifters which are designed to 'go with the flow' in the rip and have GPS units attached which enable us to monitor the speed and trajectory of the rip. We're wearing the red and yellow caps because we were instruments too. All of us had GPS units tucked down our wetsuits connected to an antenna in the cap. Our job was to float in the rip and then either swim parallel to the left, right or simply stay afloat to see where we ended up and if we got out of the rip. Some of us were wearing heart rate monitors to test the efforts between these different actions.

The research was the first experiment of a 3 year study funded by the Australian Research Council and Surf Life Saving Australia to understand more about Australian rip currents and how people should react if caught in them. The project is being co-ordinated by Rob Brander of the University of New South Wales, but involves significant collaboration with Jamie MacMahan of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and Ad Reniers from the University of Miami, Florida. We had some amazing help from our volunteers...thanks folks! I won't tell you the results because it's early days, but we're always looking for more help if you're keen.  Patrick is a PhD student at Miami and a professional kite surfer and filmed much of the experiment.

GPS equipped ‘swimmers’ carrying drifters into a rip - I’m in there!