February 2016 (ROTM#86) Narrabeen Beach, Sydney, Australia

After 7 years of putting up Rip of the Month pictures it's about time that I showed rips from one of the more famous 'rip' beaches in the world, Narrabeen Beach on Sydney's northern beaches. It's not that Narrabeen has more rips, or more dangerous rips, than anywhere else, but it has been the focal point of scientific beach research for over 40 years and what we have learned from this beach has formed the basis of much of what we know about global beach behaviour today.

Professor Andy Short of the Coastal Studies Unit at Sydney University first started doing daily sketches of the beach and rip locations as well as monthly beach surveys in the 1970's. In 1985 he published the first real scientific paper that described different types of rip currents. 

Eventually his survey program evolved with technology and was handed over to a PhD student Mitch Harley who started surveying the beach using RTK-GPS. More information was gathered from a video camera that provides daily time exposures of the beach (like the one shown here) that clearly shows the location of breaking waves (whitewater) and the rip currents (dark gaps).

Sooooo much great stuff has come out of the work of Andy, Mitch and the WRL and if you are keen to learn more check this out Mitch posted this picture on the WRL Facebook page so I know he won't mind me sharing!

But basically Narrabeen is very typical of beaches found along the south-east coast of Australia. The surf zone is dominated by sandbars and troughs which shift around, usually forming a series of rips from time to time. There's seven rips I can see in this picture. They are small, but pretty close together so not much room for error if you don't know much about rips and decide to go swimming outside of the flags! 

The classic ‘Transverse Bar Rip’ beach