Rip Currents and Surviving Them

According to a new study, it seems that everything you've been told about surviving rip currents is probably wrong.

From a diver's standpoint, rip tides, as they are often called, basically affect beach divers, not those diving from boats farther from shore. Each year in the U.S., about 100 people drown after being sucked away from beaches by rip currents; lifeguards save up to 50,000 people a year caught in rips. Hawaii has powerful rip currents. Florida as well.

We've been taught not to attempt swimming straight to shore, but rather to swim parallel to the shore until the current weakens, then swim at an angle diagonally back toward the beach.

However, research in Australia, where surfing is a national pastime, suggests that this might not be the case.

In 1938, with crowds packing Sydney's famous Bondi Beach, beachgoers witnessed hundreds of swimmers suddenly being pulled out to sea. Lifeguards were overwhelmed, and soon the beach was littered with 60 unconscious swimmers. Five died. It resulted in rip tides being studied by researchers worldwide. They found that swimming parallel to the shore only worked sometimes, yet that is often what is recommended on signs at beaches.

Rips occur when water pushed onto the beach by surf or wind flows back out to sea in narrow, concentrated channels. They can be anywhere from 10 to 200 feet wide. To make matters worse, their outward course often dulls the breaking waves, creating the illusion of calmer waters.

It has been found that 80 to 90 percent of rips studied flow in huge circles, from the shallows, out through the breakers, and back again, every few minutes. Divers or snorkelers stuck in a circulating rip have no way of knowing which way the current is flowing. Swimming parallel to the shore, they have a 50/50 chance of finding themselves swimming against the current, leading to exhaustion and subsequent drowning. It might be better to go with the flow. You may eventually be brought back close to the beach. Hopefully.

Rips are a complex, dynamic hazard, with a multitude of variables -- one's swimming ability, the current strength, the circulation, and wave size -- that make the threats difficult to offer a simple tactic. No single escape strategy is appropriate all the time. Lifeguards in Australia recommend combining the advice from both the circulation concept and the traditional parallel-to-the-shore swimming, leaving it up to you to figure out.

John Bantin