June 2015 (ROTM#78) Stanwell Park, NSW Australia

Subtle. Rip currents can be very subtle, but they do give us many different kinds of visual clues on how to spot them. On the day I took this picture, the waves were tiny, about 1 ft and yet there was a rip heading way offshore. How can you tell? Look at the middle section of the picture. Between the breaking waves is a dark gap. This is the rip current sitting in and flowing through a deep gap, or channel, between the shallow sand bars where the waves are breaking. The water is also bumpy and rippled in the rip, so the surface water texture looks different. This is because rips carry water offshore, but the waves are still bringing water towards the beach, so there’s some interaction there.

What’s amazing about this rip though is that despite how small the waves are and how SAFE a day this would be to go swimming, the rip goes almost 100 meters offshore. You can see where it ends – an area called the rip head; where there’s an area of choppy and rippled water. It was also incredibly fast. Rips are just as dangerous on calm and ‘safe’ looking days as they are on windy and stormy days. Perhaps moreso because you are more likely to go swimming. I also took some video footage of this rip a few weeks later and posted it on my Dr Rip’s Science of the Surf Facebook page

Surface texture is a big clue to spotting rips.