James's Puerto Rico Adventure: Staying safe at the beach

Staying safe from a riptide is very important. While tens of thousands of people are rescued from riptides by lifeguards every year, about 100 people die from being caught in the current.

Riptides and Rip currents are very fast moving channels of water that can reach up to 8 Ft per second of flowing water. Riptides and rip currents are two semi different things. A riptide is a specific type of current that is associated with the fast movement of tidal like water through inlets, estuaries and harbors. The cause of many riptides is changing wave heights or heavy breaking waves. They are often by beach areas, piers and other sections of land that are sticking out. A rip current, however, is a semi strong current, that flows outward towards the middle of the shallow water where people swim. Also riptides pull you under the water, but rip currents pull you out quite a ways and then force you under.

This picture has some safety tips on it, as well as how the water moves and forms a rip current. I got it from a different website.

Here are some water safety tips I learned:

1. Only swim at a beach if there’s a lifeguard watching you. If a lifeguard’s watching then you have only a 1 in 18 million chance of drowning. More than three quarters of all people who drown in the United States drown at unguarded beaches.

2. If you go to the NOAA website there is a rip current forecast that shows you how high risk your local beach is each day.

3. Learn how to spot rip currents.

If you ever get caught in a riptide or rip current:

DO NOT PANIC, always stay calm and relaxed and try to keep your feet on the sandy bottom or float on your back. Swim parallel to the beach until you escape the current’s pull, then come in at a very slight angle so that you will eventually reach the shore. If you are not a very advanced swimmer and you find that you are going nowhere when trying to swim out of the channel, then simply tread water or float on your back and try to make a lot of noise.

Recently scientists have been discovering and exploring other ways to escape Riptides. Riptides most likely occur in the hurricane and tornado season between August and October. There are three main types of rips, flash rips that come in one place for a short amount of time and can come in at any time and disperse at any time. Then there is the fixed rip that is formed between sandbars and can stay in the same place for up to a few months and finally there is the permanent rip that stays in one place because of some kind of obstacle in its way.

Us at the Coconut Beach. You can see where the waves crash up against the coral that is protecting the beach.

We have heard that certain beaches in San Juan, which are unguarded by coral reef or rocks, have a higher risk of riptides and rip currents. We choose beaches that are protected, such as Balneario Escambron, which has a lifeguard, or the small beach by the Avenida Ashford bridge, which is unguarded but heavily protected by rocks. We call the beach by Balneario Escambron the “Coconut Beach” after all of the coconut trees that shade the beach. We call the one by the Ashford Bridge the “Shell Beach” because we picked up some shells there, but what’s most interesting is the pelicans that dive into the water for fish just beyond the rocks.