October 2022 (ROTM#166) Praia do Tombo, Guaruja, Brazil

There is a fantastic citizen science project called CoastSnap that was started by a colleague of mine Dr Mitch Harley (@DocHarleyMD on Twitter), a coastal engineer and scientist from the UNSW Water Research Laboratory in Sydney. It involves the establishment of information boards installed at popular elevated locations overlooking beaches that have a cradle where you can insert your smartphone and take a picture. This creates a time series of beach images that allow for analysis which show how the shoreline of beaches are behaving – an extremely valuable way to monitor the impacts of storms and sea level rise.

 CoastSnap has really taken off from a few humble stations in Sydney to over 250 stations in 24 countries! You can also download the CoastSnap app and start recording changes taking place at a beach near you. I do this for my local beach. It’s fun and rewarding!

 But the CoastSnap images also capture a lot of other cool things, like rip currents! This was was uploaded by a Coastsnapper named Gabriel Kuhlmann and Mitch uploaded it to Twitter and tagged me. So here it is – a great example of two channelised rips at Praia do Tombo in the municipality of Guaruja which is about 50 km south-east of Sao Paulo. The one further along the beach goes straight out (the dark gap through the surf) and has carved out an impressive rip embayment along the shoreline.

 I have never been to Brazil, but the beaches seem remarkably similar to many of those found in Australia – and there’s a lot of them. One last thing about Mitch Harley – I taught him in my first year class and take full credit for his academic success ever since!

Amazing beaches in Brazil. And rips!