{"id":3211,"date":"2026-07-16T11:50:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T11:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/?p=3211"},"modified":"2026-07-16T11:50:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T11:50:27","slug":"everything-you-know-about-surviving-a-rip-current-is-wrong-heres-what-to-actually-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/2026\/07\/16\/everything-you-know-about-surviving-a-rip-current-is-wrong-heres-what-to-actually-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything You Know About Surviving a Rip Current Is Wrong. Here’s What to Actually Do."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"Rip
Rip currents kill more beachgoers each year than any other threat. Time to relearn how to fight them. (Photo: Todd Quackenbush\/Unsplash)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Everything You Know About Surviving a Rip Current Is Wrong. Here’s What to Actually Do.<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The “swim parallel to shore” advice you’ve heard your whole life is outdated. A coastal safety researcher explains what actually works \u2014 and why the old guidance can make things worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By David Ferry<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published: July 16, 2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Conventional wisdom says that Jamie MacMahan was doing everything right when, about a decade ago, he found himself caught in a rip current<\/a> while swimming off the coast of Monterey, California. Rips flow seaward, out to deep water, so beach access signs across the country advise swimmers to paddle parallel to the beach to escape the them. The savage, dread-inducing flows kill more beachgoers each year than any other threat and MacMahan, a professor of oceanography and a strong swimmer, was following the \u201cswim parallel\u201d gospel, paddling steadily. But as he thrashed in the cold Pacific, the rip refused to relent. \u201cI thought, \u2018That\u2019s interesting,\u2019\u201d MacMahan says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MacMahan, it\u2019s important to note, had done this to himself. A rip current expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, he had volunteered to subject himself to the rip for a safety video the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization was filming. With plenty of experience, he wasn\u2019t in serious danger. \u201cBut as I was swimming parallel to the shore, left and right, I noticed that it was easier to swim one direction more than the other,\u201d MacMahan says. The safety guidelines he was promoting\u2014the life-saving advice we tell the millions of Americans who flock to the beach each summer\u2014he thought, could be wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last five years, MacMahan\u2019s research has upended the field of rip current studies. Since that initial experience in Monterey, he\u2019s used GPS devices to meticulously track nearshore currents in the U.S., England, and France, and has jumped into rips around the world. Rips can form on any beach, MacMahan says, and swimmers usually don\u2019t know a rip\u2019s present until they\u2019re in its clutches. Panicked victims often try to swim directly back to shore\u2014against the powerful offshore flow. Swimmers familiar with rips might try swimming parallel to escape. But MacMahan\u2019s research suggests doing the unthinkable: giving in and going with the flow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIf you can relax\u2014and it\u2019s a long time, for maybe three minutes\u2014you\u2019re generally going to float back to the beach.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Eighty to 90 percent of rips MacMahan has studied flow in huge circles, from the shallows, out through the breakers and back again, every few minutes. A swimmer stuck in a circulating rip has no way of knowing which way the current is flowing. That means that by swimming parallel to the shore\u2014something signs at nearly every popular beach in the country advise\u2014the swimmer has a 50\/50 chance of paddling against the deadly current.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you can relax\u2014and it\u2019s a long time, for maybe three minutes\u2014you\u2019re generally going to float back to the beach,\u201d MacMahan says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a radically simple finding\u2014one that challenges our primordial instincts and everything we think we know about beach safety. The discovery, which MacMahan published in Marine Geology<\/em><\/a> in 2010 and calls rip current \u201ccirculation,\u201d is still contentious six years later. His peer-reviewed findings have dramatically changed the way Australia tells its citizens how to survive this menace. But at home, MacMahan\u2019s work is considerably more controversial and his research has opened a gaping divide in the sleepy rip current field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe reaction to Jamie\u2019s findings has polarized the community,\u201d says Rob Brander, a prominent rip researcher. For some leaders in the field, MacMahan\u2019s recommendation to simply float through a rip current is, at best, an idea to be ignored and dismissed; at worst, though, the advice is potentially deadly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How Rip Currents Can Be Deadly<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Chris Brewster, the International Life Saving Federation\u2019s chief in the U.S. and a 30-year veteran of the beach tower, remembers the only victim he couldn\u2019t save from a rip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an unseasonably warm February day in 1988 and the surf was triple overhead at San Diego\u2019s South Mission Beach, where Brewster was the lifeguard sergeant in command.* From the three-story guard tower, Brewster saw two swimmers getting sucked out to sea. \u201cIt was an amazingly concentrated rip,\u201d he says. Brewster dispatched a lifeguard as the panicked swimmers tried to swim directly back to shore. Riding the current, which can flow as fast as eight feet per second\u2014significantly speedier than an Olympic swimmer\u2019s top speed<\/a>\u2014the lifeguard reached the first victim quickly. \u201cBut this kid, Sam Crawley, was pulled farther out,\u201d Brewster says. \u201cI\u2019m intently watching him. And he just gives it up and submerges. I think that\u2019s the only time I\u2019ve ever watched somebody die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ll remember this kid for the rest of my life,\u201d Brewster says. \u201cI had to call his dad to tell him his son was dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. Lifeguard Association estimates that nearly 100 people die in rip currents each year<\/a>, and that lifeguards saved over 48,000 people from rips in 2015 alone<\/a>. The typical victim is like Crawley: he or she struggles against the unrelenting pull, panics, and eventually succumbs to exhaustion. Rips can form on any beach with waves, including the Great Lakes, in nearly any conditions. They occur when water pushed onto the beach by surf or wind flows back out to sea in narrow, concentrated channels and they can be anywhere from ten to 200 feet wide. To make matters worse, their outward course often dulls the breaking waves and creates the illusion of calmer waters for inexperienced beachgoers. Lifeguards call rips \u201cdrowning machines,\u201d and Brewster believes if Crawley had swum parallel to the current, rather than tire himself out by grinding against it, he might have lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I called Brewster to ask him about circulation, he was a little exasperated. \u201cI\u2019m unhappy to see it printed,\u201d he said, referring to Jamie MacMahan\u2019s research. \u201cYou have to understand: Jamie looks at it from a very scientific perspective. The logical thing, in his view, is try floating and see if that works.\u201d But nothing is logical when you\u2019re being sucked out sea in pounding surf. \u201cAre you going to make that very, shall we say \u2018dispassionate\u2019 decision, when you think you might die?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brewster is not alone in his resistance. The U.S. Lifesaving Association has refused to incorporate MacMahan\u2019s research into its advice for beachgoers and instead supports NOAA\u2019s public advisory campaign that urges swimmers to \u201cbreak the grip of the rip\u201d and swim parallel to the shore. Spencer Rogers, a researcher directly involved in NOAA\u2019s campaign says that while the evidence is being reevaluated, \u201cWe don\u2019t think we can tell somebody just to float.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent research on the East Coast by Rogers, a coastal erosion expert affiliated with the research outfit North Carolina Sea Grant, showed that while most rips in North Carolina do circulate, about half stopped after several laps and deposited any floating GPS trackers out to sea, past the breakers<\/a>. Rogers says that while circulating cells most definitely exist\u2014and are particularly persistent where MacMahan carried out his research in California\u2014the phenomenon isn\u2019t consistent or widespread enough to change the way we talk about surviving rips. Every beach is different, Roger says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe put people in rips that are good swimmers or shitty swimmers. Everything we\u2019ve done points to the fact that there\u2019s not one single message that works.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

MacMahan readily acknowledges that not all rips take swimmers back to shore, but still advises a \u201cfloat first\u201d approach. The current guidelines, he says, frighten swimmers and encourage them to overexert themselves trying to escape the rip. \u201cA lot of the rip current educational info instills fear and panic,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are other brochures with pictures of a beach with a tombstone that says RIP. I say, if I\u2019m someone who has seen this in my peripheral and end up in a rip current, that tells me I\u2019m dead. Then you panic. You haven\u2019t created a sense of survival.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What Sciences Says About How to Survive a Rip Tide<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The best place to look to understand the science of rip currents, and how to survive them, may be the beach-happy continent of Australia, where 85 percent of the population lives by the coast and surfing is a national pastime. There, the danger of rip currents is more seared into the public conscious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On February 6, 1938, crowds packed Sydney\u2019s famed Bondi beach to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Britain\u2019s colonization of the continent. A little after 3 P.M., on what would become known as Black Sunday, a set of large waves swept through the surf zone and wiped away the sand bar. Suddenly, hundreds of swimmers found themselves being pulled out to sea. Lifeguards were overwhelmed and \u201csome of them had to punch their way through a wall of distressed bathers to get to others in more danger,\u201d Sydney\u2019s Daily Telegraph<\/em> reported on the anniversary<\/a>. The beach, at one point, was littered with the unconscious bodies of 60 victims. All told, 200 some odd people were plucked from the water and, after herculean resuscitation efforts, only five died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, rips kill more Australians than bushfires, floods, cyclones, and sharks combined. Perhaps as a result, the ideological riff over how to survive the currents has been more public. Surf Life Saving Australia, the country\u2019s main water safety group, has worked closely with Rob Brander, a professor at the University of New South Wales who goes by the nickname \u201cDr. Rip,\u201d and, in the last few years, the lifeguarding organization\u2019s opinions have evolved with Brander\u2019s studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brander has worked with MacMahan and other prominent rip researchers around the world, but lately his studies have focused on something scholars ignored for decades: how swimmers caught in rips actually respond to the life or death terror of being pulled into deep water<\/a>. He\u2019s interviewed dozens of survivors and strapped GPS devices onto actual swimmers and put them into rips. The results are not so clear-cut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe put people in rips that are good swimmers or shitty swimmers,\u201d Brander says. \u201cEverything we\u2019ve done points to the fact that there\u2019s not one single message that works. Sometimes swim parallel is great, sometimes it doesn\u2019t work. Same for floating.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a view that the Surf Life Saving Australia has taken, too. After working with Brander, they\u2019ve updated their messaging. Rips are a complex, dynamic hazard and the multitude of variables\u2014swimming ability, current strength, circulation, wave size\u2014make the threat nearly impossible to solve with one-size-fits-all advice. No single \u201cescape strategy\u201d is appropriate all the time, the group now says, and lifeguards in Australia currently recommend combining the advice from both MacMahan\u2019s circulation concept and traditionalists like Brewster. If you\u2019re not a strong swimmer, stay afloat and signal for help; if you can swim, consider paddling parallel to the beach toward breaking waves\u2014though be mindful of the potential circulating current. \u201cAll responses,\u201d the group concedes, \u201chave their pitfalls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the U.S., no such compromise appears likely and the \u201cescape the rip\u201d signs promoting swimming parallel won\u2019t be coming down any time soon. In the end, all any expert can do is promote public awareness of rips, MacMahan says. \u201cThe scientific community has accepted [the circulating research],\u201d MacMahan says. \u201cThey don\u2019t see flaws in our methodology. Until proven otherwise, we believe this is what we know. But changing policy is hard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

Everything You Know About Surviving a Rip Current Is Wrong. Here’s What to Actually Do. The “swim parallel to shore” advice you’ve heard your whole life is outdated. A coastal safety researcher explains what actually works \u2014 and why the old guidance can make things worse. By David Ferry Published: July 16, 2026 Conventional wisdom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":3210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main"],"modified_by":"Outside Editors","acf":{"article_authors":"David Ferry","send_as_draft":true,"send_as_paid":true,"send_as_featured":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3273,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3211\/revisions\/3273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}