Aside from being a huge hazard to bathers and swimmers, they can also cause significant beach erosion, particularly channelized rip currents, which can stay in the same place for days, weeks and even months.

Here’s another boundary rip, sometimes called a permanent or structural rip, that is flowing offshore against the rock platform. You can see the green gap pretty clearly. It’s narrow, only a few m’s wide and it hugs the rock platform and would take you around the corner out of sight.

This picture is a good example of how to spot a rip from a distance. I had the advantage of height, which is always important, and I’m looking for narrow, dark, green gaps that extend from the beach through the surf – white is nice, green is mean!

But every now and then, drones capture incredible footage of rip current circulation like this one, sent to me by Tony Gibbs (@tonedrone on Instagram).

The thin green line. I love this picture. Most of the pictures I post on the Rip of the Month are channel rips, which sit in deeper channels between shallow sand bars, and appear as darker, narrower gaps between areas of whitewater.

This picture is taken from Sumaro Head, the eastern most point on the island. Hopefully you can see the pronounced narrow, dark channel heading offshore about 100 m down the beach. That’s the rip.

I think I have now seen the strongest, angriest rip current of my life. In late May I was visiting the border towns of Coolangatta, QLD and Tweed Heads, NSW, which are known for their beautiful beaches and fantastic surf breaks.

Dreamtime Beach was also the Rip of the Month for September 2018, but it deserves another mention. Dreamtime is just south of Tweed Heads, in Fingal Head, and was a relatively quiet location until it became a social media favourite, making numerous appearances on 'Top 10 Australian Beach' and 'Best Secret Beaches' lists - and now it's an Instagram destination.

This is possibly the best rip current photo I've seen. It was taken from a drone by Taylor Busbee (@coastal.locals on Instagram) and it shows rip current after rip current stacked up along the entire beach in Pensacola Beach, Florida.

The 'La Nina' summer on the east coast of NSW is now officially over and it wasn't much of a summer weather-wise, which is perhaps fortunate from a drowning perspective as it seemed like all of our beaches were characterised by multitudes of rip currents.

It's been the summer of rips here on the east coast of Australia as I've seen spectacular rip currents at every surf beach I've visited. While there's been a few drownings, overall we've been lucky thanks to a lot of rain early on keeping crowds down and the fantastic efforts of lifeguards and lifesavers.

This is the 12th anniversary of the Rip of the Month feature. That's 144 rip current pictures if you're counting, which must represent the largest single collection of rip current pictures in the world! I really hope it's helped some people learn a little bit more about how to spot rips.