Imagine this was a lovely beach along the coast and you were on holiday…would you go in?

In conditions like this, where would the lifeguards put the red and yellow flags? There’s no place to put them that’s really safe.

You are about a million times more likely to be bitten by a dog at Sharky Beach than a shark. Or get caught in a rip current.

Large waves like this stir up a lot of sand and contribute to beach erosion, but if you look in the middle of the image, there is a narrow patch of turbulent water with clouds of sand heading offshore. That’s what we refer to as a ‘mega rip current’

I can think of no better way to celebrate the 200^th Rip of the Month Anniversary than to show you a picture of rip currents from North Korea!

This picture shows a series of channelised rip currents (the dark green gaps) lining the beach in front of the resorts and condos. That is a VERY dangerous beach when these conditions occur

Everyone loves the sand collection because it honestly looks fantastic. Recently one of my PhD students came back from a trip to Tasmania with some sand for me from Moorina Beach on Bruny Island in Tasmania.

I was reading the newspaper online one day and some annoying real estate prize draw pop up ad came up, but I was amazed to see that it had a great overhead beach picture of Sydney’s Freshwater Beach that had two prominent rip currents!

Last year I was lucky enough to be approached by The Conversation to create an interactive rip spotting quiz and after a lot of procrastinating on my part, it finally came out last December!

It’s back to Oahu’s famous North Shore this month – the world famous Sunset Beach. Most of the North Shore is actually one long beach extending about 5 kilometers and encompasses a number of famous surf breaks

The rip current should be reasonably obvious if you’ve been following my ‘white is nice, green is mean’ and ‘look for dark gaps’ mantra. The rip is right in the middle of the breaking waves.

This picture shows a classic ‘dark gap’ rip current between breaking waves. But it wasn’t a rip current at all. There was no rip at the beach and I just waited until I saw some random wave breaking that made conditions look like a rip.