Australia has some of the best beaches in the world and everybody loves going to the
beach, but there's something on the beach called rip currents.
Rips are something that every Australian and every overseas tourist should know about because
they're something that can get you into trouble.
I'm Doctor Rob Brander from the University of New South Wales, and I'm a surf scientist
and surf lifesaver.
During the summer months in Australia, on average somebody drowns in a rip every 2 or
3 days.
And most of the thousands of rescues that happen on our beaches are related to rips.
Remember that it only takes about a minute to drown, so it's very important to be able
to spot rips on your own.
Now if you haven't noticed I've been swimming between the flags and that's where everybody
should swim because the lifesavers and the lifeguards put the flags in the safest part
of the beach away from the rips.
And if you don't know what a rip is, if you swim between the flags that takes a lot of
the guesswork out of having to spot one.
However of the more than 11,000 beaches in Australia, only 3 percent are actually patrolled
by surf lifesavers and lifeguards and that means there's a lot of beaches and a lot of
rips that you could easily get into trouble in.
Well what are rips?
It's a really a good question.
And what we do is throw purple dye -- which is harmless -- into the water.
The dye goes wherever the water goes and it's an easy way to spot the rip.
Well let me tell you what rips are not.
They're not undertow they won't pull you under because there is no such thing as an undertow.
They're not riptides because they're not a tide, they're a current, they flow pretty
steady and they won't take you to New Zealand!
Basically rips are strong narrow currents that flow from the shoreline through the surf
zone and offshore.
They exist to take all the breaking water that is piling up on the beach back out to
sea.
Here you see a nice green gap almost like a road going through the surf, and that's
the rip current.
Because it's sitting in a deeper channel in this case between the reef and the sand bar.
But look at it there's no waves breaking there's hardly any white water, whereas you look to
the right and you've got your sand bar, shallow water, waves are breaking there bringing all
that water in and back out through the rip, it looks perfect and that's how you spot it.
It's a pretty scary experience getting stuck in a rip and there's definitely some do's
and don'ts about how you should behave if you find yourself caught in one.
The main thing is not to panic.
DON'T PANIC because the rip will not pull you under the water.
All the rip will do it will take you further out to sea and it'll sometimes it will bring
you back.
Remember that you have got air in your lungs, you float, you're very buoyant, so DON'T PANIC.
The second thing to do is if you're not a particularly good swimmer, PUT YOUR HAND UP,
straight up like that, it signals for the lifeguards and the lifesavers to come and
get you.
What you could also do if you're a good swimmer is you could look around, and if you can see
the sides of the rip, which is usually the shallower water where the waves are breaking,
nice- a lot of white water, swim towards that area.
White water is good because it means it's shallow, you can maybe stand up, and also
water brings you back to the beach.
What you should never do is swim against the rip.
These things flow pretty fast and you'll just find yourselves going backwards, swimming
faster, getting tired, and then you'll start to get scared.
So just GO WITH THE FLOW, signal for the lifeguard or let the rip take you around and get out
of it yourself.
One of the reasons that rips are dangerous is that they flow faster than people can swim
and sometimes they can flow faster than even Olympic swimmers.
Rips are most dangerous because they actually look like the safest place to swim.
A view from a headland is always a good way to spot a rip because you are up high and
looking down on the beach and they're a lot easier to see, and often surfers and swimmers
will check out the beach for rips before they go down in the water.
Not all rips are the same.
The most common type is what we call a fixed rip, and fixed rips are stuck between sandbars
and they might stay in the same place for days, weeks and even months.
Well we've just had an example of a flash rip where all of a sudden the rip has pulsed
out where those surfers are you can see the, the chopped up messy white water that's just
gone out and then it's just stopped.
And that's one common thing about these flash rips is that they can suddenly occur anywhere
where there's suddenly been a large group of waves breaking, and it pushes the rip out
and then it disappears.
Finally we get something called a permanent rip or headland rip and these are rips that
are pushed against the headland and they're there almost all the time.
So it is another good reason to always be careful when you're swimming close to headlands
and rocks.
If there's no lifeguards or flags at a beach, the simple rule is DON'T GO IN.
If you do go in, make sure you are an experienced swimmer or surfer, make sure you are always
with somebody, and make sure you know how to spot rips.