November 2016 (ROTM#95) Tamarama Beach, NSW Australia

I've been a member of the Tamarama Beach Surf Life Saving Club in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs since 1993 and was honoured to be awarded a Life Membership this year. Tamarama was also where I started giving my Science of the Surf community talks and dye releases back in 2002. So it was a pleasure to be asked by the Club to give one of my SOS talks last week as part of their community beach safety event. After my talk, we did a dye release into the rip current (as you can see in the picture) and had Australian Olympic swimmer (and medalist) Matt Abood jump in the water and demonstrate how you should react and escape from the rip. 

 It was not a classic rip by any means. One of the club members and friend of mine, Guy Debelle, let the dye go in a small rip at the northern end (bottom of the photo). It quickly went diagonally across the beach and while some it returned to the beach with the waves, most of it drifted south until it reached a rip against the rocks at the far end of the beach and quickly headed offshore.

 There's a few lessons here. First, not all rips flow straight offshore. That's why I'm not a huge fan of the 'swim parallel to the beach' escape advice. This was demonstrated by Olympic swimmer Matt who floated out in the rip, tried to swim parallel to the north, didn't get far because he was actually swimming against the current, so he swam the other way and easily got out of the rip because he was swimming with the current. Swimming parallel can be a complete coin toss in terms of choosing the best direction to swim. 

 On the other hand, someone floating in this rip would have had a chance of getting circulated back safely into the shallow water, but also may have been carried to the south end where they would have been taken offshore.

 So what should you do? Learn to spot rips and don't get stuck in one in the first place!

 Thanks to Sheridan Nilsson for the photo 

Dye release location is important in a rip current!