Various types of coloured dye have been used in rip currents for many years as an educational tool to help people better understand the speed and trajectory of this common beach hazard. It’s encouraging to see a new study by Indonesian researchers who released dye into a rip current at Drini Beach.

Back in 2019, Rob Brander and Dr Mitch Harley from the UNSW Sydney Water Research Laboratory (WRL) received funding from the NSW Government Department of Justice Water Safety Fund (alas, this funding scheme is now defunct) for the project ‘Identifying Rip Currents and Beach Usage at Unpatrolled Beach Locations’.

There’s been a bit of a lull in rip current research lately, but an exciting new study led by Sebastian Pitman of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand was recently published in the Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.