Life Learning Lab: Rip Currents

          I felt the water rushing toward the sea.  I held onto Joel's life jacket tightly, for fear that he would float away.  What were we in?

          We were in a rip current.  A rip current can occur wherever there are breaking waves.  A breaking wave appears when it hits something like a sandbar or pier.  It then breaks and pushes toward the shore.  More breakers push the water parallel to the shore.  When the water finds a break between the sandbar or pier, it rushes out, carrying anything in it's way with it.  Soon, it splits up, at the 'head' of the rip. 

          It is important to know how to get out of a rip, and most people try to get out of it by swimming directly against it.  This doesn't work, so make sure you know how to really do it: To get out of a rip, wait until you get to the 'head' of the rip, and then swim a few strokes at a right angle to the current.  Most rips aren't very wide, so getting out should be easy.

          Unfortunately, many people don't know how to get out of a rip, so US rips are responsible for 46 deaths annually.  To help reduce that number, here's how to identify a rip:

·       It is almost always a darker, more murky color then the water around it

·       You can usually see a gap between the breaking waves

·       It can be more foamy then the water around it

I hope you can find this information useful!

This information was collected from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_current

-Kyle Wilson