. Collected reprints, Essa Institute for Oceanography. Oceanography This article is offered to members of the ESSA family in the hope that it will make their summer vaca- tions safer and happier. Reprinted from ESSA WORLD July, 1967 This summer, make sure you outwit the KILLER AT THE SEASHORE I his summer your child could drown —needlessly—at the seashore. He may be an able swimmer. He may be in very shallow water perhaps only up to his chin. It is a warm sunny day, with a good surf running. Lots of other chil- dren are playing in the shallows, and tragedy seems far removed. But
. Collected reprints, Essa Institute for Oceanography. Oceanography This article is offered to members of the ESSA family in the hope that it will make their summer vaca- tions safer and happier. Reprinted from ESSA WORLD July, 1967 This summer, make sure you outwit the KILLER AT THE SEASHORE I his summer your child could drown —needlessly—at the seashore. He may be an able swimmer. He may be in very shallow water perhaps only up to his chin. It is a warm sunny day, with a good surf running. Lots of other chil- dren are playing in the shallows, and tragedy seems far removed. But suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, he may feel the bottom moving fast beneath his feet and realize he is being swept out to sea. Knowing that he can swim well, he may strike out hard against the current for shore. But after a few minutes, he will find that he is not mak- ing any headway, that the water around him is over his head, that he is almost out to the surf zone. He may call for help, but no one will hear him above the surf's roar. Panic will take over, along with exhaustion, and maybe a bad cramp. And in another moment, he will be dead by drowning. Every year, many persons unfamiliar BY HARRIS B. STEWART, JR. Acting Director, ESSA Institute for Oceanography with rip currents lose their lives un- necessarily. They may be excellent swimmers, but they may not know what to do when caught in a rip current. And they will die, as victims of killer currents, in fact, but as victims of the exhaustion and panic that would never have occurred if more swimmers know how to recognize a rip current and how relatively easy it is to swim out of one. The Institute for Oceanography has gathered and facts about rip currents that endanger the lives of swimmers and developed some simple rules of cop- ing with them. It would be useful, and even life-saving, for every swimmer to know them as he prepares to take a summer vacation at the beach. I What is a rip cur- JJ rent? Technically I spea
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