October 2014 (ROTM#70) Lacanau, France

I am presently on sabbatical doing rip current related research at the University of Bordeaux with Bruno Castelle, who is one of the best in the business. He provided me with this amazing photograph taken by Julien Lestage of a coastal town near Bordeaux called Lacanau.

The last winter saw France have an incredible series of storms (just like the UK) with massive amounts of coastal erosion. If you look at this photograph, you can see in the distance that the beach and dune have been scalloped with large embayments. Each of these embayments was eroded out by the action of rip currents during the storms. So while rip currents are dangerous to people, they are also a main cause of beach erosion.

The coast here has a large tide range and the biggest storm occurred during a spring high tide which also helped maximise the erosion. You can actually see that the rip currents are still present opposite the embayments, appearing as narrow dark gaps between the breaking waves.

I’d be worried about erosion