June 2014 (ROTM#66) Perranporth Beach, UK

Perranporth Beach is a beautiful beach on the incredibly scenic Cornwall coast and is very popular with tourists, surfers....and scientists. It has become the focus for many rip current related scientific endeavours of late, primarily conducted by the University of Plymouth (check out their fantastic rip current website ), and more recently by Southampton University and PhD student Sebastian Pitman, who was nice enough to send me this picture.

Perranporth has a large tide range so the shoreline and surf conditions shift pretty rapidly over the space of a tidal cycle. In this picture the rips are the dark green channels that you can see extending along the beach, starting from the one in the foreground against the rocks. One interesting characteristic about these rips is that due to the rapidly shifting shoreline position, the rips tend to 'turn on and off' quite quickly, which offers challenges to bathers and lifeguards alike.

This is about mid-tide!