December 2020 (ROTM144) Coalcliff Beach, NSW, Australia

Like most of us, I haven't had many opportunities to travel much this year due to COVID restrictions so my new rip current pictures are pretty local, in this case the beach near where I live. Coalcliff is an interesting beach as it's a mixed sand and gravel beach, which is very unusual in NSW or even Australia. As a result, it's quite steep and narrow and normally rip currents only occur against the rock reef at the southern end of the beach (a boundary rip) that is outside of this picture to the right. But this year we've had a persistent rip current in the middle of the beach.

 It's a tricky one as it's not occupying a distinct deep channel between sandbars, because Coalcliff doesn't have any sandbars at the moment. But I think it represents a topographic low point between submerged rocks at both ends of the beach, and the water is returning seaward through that. To spot the rip you need to look pretty much in the middle of the picture. There's a wide dark gap between the whitewater of breaking waves, but towards the far end of that dark gap there's a narrow section of water that is a bit darker and also has a different surface texture - it's a bit bumpy and rippled. That's the rip. The offshore flow of the rip is acting against the incoming wave motion to create a disturbance on the surface.

There's a lot of talk in the beach safety world about how we should best educate people about rip currents. Should we show them pictures or video? Should we show them perspectives from beach level or above? Without studying this, we won't really have an answer about which approach is most effective. We have just established the UNSW Beach Safety Research Group and we are always looking for new collaborators and students. If you'd like to get involved in beach safety and rip current research, please contact us at www.beachsafetyresearch.com

My home beach. Can you spot the rip?