Abstract
Abstract. Rip currents (“rips”) are the leading cause of drowning on surf beaches worldwide. A major contributing factor is that many beachgoers are unable to identify rip currents. Previous research has attempted to quantify beachgoers' rip identification ability using photographs of rip currents without identifying whether this usefully translates into an ability to identify a rip current in situ at the beach. This study is the first to compare beachgoers ability to identify rip currents in photographs and in situ at a beach in New Zealand (Muriwai Beach) where a channel rip current was present. Only 22 % of respondents were able to identify the in situ rip current. The highest rates of success were for males (33 %), New Zealand residents (25 %), and local beach users (29 %). Of all respondents who were successful at identifying the rip current in situ, 62 % were active surfers/bodyboarders, and 28 % were active beach swimmers. Of the respondents who were able to identify a rip current in two photographs, only 34 % were able to translate this into a successful in situ rip identification, which suggests that the ability to identify rip currents by beachgoers is worse than reported by previous studies involving photographs. This study highlights the difficulty of successfully identifying a rip current in reality and that photographs are not necessarily a useful means of teaching individuals to identify rip currents. It advocates for the use of more immersive and realistic education strategies, such as the use of virtual reality headsets showing moving imagery (videos) of rip currents in order to improve rip identification ability.
Highlights
Rip currents are fast, narrow, seaward-directed flows of water that commonly exist on sandy beaches
A total of 78 % of respondents (n = 103 of 132) were unable to identify the in situ rip current
Of the 29 people able to identify the in situ rip current, 27 (93 %) lived in New Zealand
Summary
Rip currents (colloquially known as “rips”) are fast, narrow, seaward-directed flows of water that commonly exist on sandy beaches. Channel rips occupy morphologic depressions (channels) between adjacent sand bars and are generated by alongshore variability in wave breaking (Castelle et al, 2016) which provides a distinct visual signature (Fig. 1). Rips originate near the shoreline and generally flow offshore, with typical mean flow velocities of 0.5– 0.8 m s−1 and instantaneous velocities occasionally reaching 2 m s−1 (MacMahan et al, 2006). The lack of national reporting structures for drownings mean that the true extent of global rip-related drowning is unknown (Brander and MacMahan, 2011), but some notable studies estimate in excess of 100 drownings per year in the US (Brewster et al, 2019) and around 21 per year in Australia (SLSA, 2019b)
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