beach, but there's something on the beach called rip currents. Rips are something that

every Australian and every overseas tourist should know about because they're something

that can get you into trouble. I'm Doctor Rob Brander from the University of New South

Wales, and I'm a surf scientist and surf lifesaver. During the summer months in Australia, on

average somebody drowns in a rip every 2 or 3 days. And most of the thousands of rescues

that happen on our beaches are related to rips. Remember that it only takes about a

minute to drown, so it's very important to be able to spot rips on your own. Now if you

haven't noticed I've been swimming between the flags and that's where everybody should

swim because the lifesavers and the lifeguards put the flags in the safest part of the beach

away from the rips. And if you don't know what a rip is, if you swim between the flags

that takes a lot of the guesswork out of having to spot one. However of the more than 11,000

beaches in Australia, only 3 percent are actually patrolled by surf lifesavers and lifeguards

and that means there's a lot of beaches and a lot of rips that you could easily get into

trouble in. Well what are rips? It's a really a good question. And what we do is throw purple

dye -- which is harmless -- into the water. The dye goes wherever the water goes and it's

an easy way to spot the rip. Well let me tell you what rips are not. They're not undertow

they won't pull you under because there is no such thing as an undertow. They're not

riptides because they're not a tide, they're a current, they flow pretty steady and they

won't take you to New Zealand! Basically rips are strong narrow currents that flow from

the shoreline through the surf zone and offshore. They exist to take all the breaking water

that is piling up on the beach back out to sea. Here you see a nice green gap almost

like a road going through the surf, and that's the rip current. Because it's sitting in a

deeper channel in this case between the reef and the sand bar. But look at it there's no

waves breaking there's hardly any white water, whereas you look to the right and you've got

your sand bar, shallow water, waves are breaking there bringing all that water in and back

out through the rip, it looks perfect and that's how you spot it. It's a pretty scary

experience getting stuck in a rip and there's definitely some do's and don'ts about how

you should behave if you find yourself caught in one. The main thing is not to panic. DON'T

PANIC because the rip will not pull you under the water. All the rip will do it will take

you further out to sea and it'll sometimes it will bring you back. Remember that you

have got air in your lungs, you float, you're very buoyant, so DON'T PANIC. The second thing

to do is if you're not a particularly good swimmer, PUT YOUR HAND UP, straight up like

that, it signals for the lifeguards and the lifesavers to come and get you. What you could

also do if you're a good swimmer is you could look around, and if you can see the sides

of the rip, which is usually the shallower water where the waves are breaking, nice-

a lot of white water, swim towards that area. White water is good because it means it's

shallow, you can maybe stand up, and also water brings you back to the beach. What you

should never do is swim against the rip. These things flow pretty fast and you'll just find

yourselves going backwards, swimming faster, getting tired, and then you'll start to get

scared. So just GO WITH THE FLOW, signal for the lifeguard or let the rip take you around

and get out of it yourself. One of the reasons that rips are dangerous is that they flow

faster than people can swim and sometimes they can flow faster than even Olympic swimmers.

Rips are most dangerous because they actually look like the safest place to swim. A view

from a headland is always a good way to spot a rip because you are up high and looking

down on the beach and they're a lot easier to see, and often surfers and swimmers will

check out the beach for rips before they go down in the water. Not all rips are the same.

The most common type is what we call a fixed rip, and fixed rips are stuck between sandbars

and they might stay in the same place for days, weeks and even months. Well we've just

had an example of a flash rip where all of a sudden the rip has pulsed out where those

surfers are you can see the, the chopped up messy white water that's just gone out and

then it's just stopped. And that's one common thing about these flash rips is that they

can suddenly occur anywhere where there's suddenly been a large group of waves breaking,

and it pushes the rip out and then it disappears. Finally we get something called a permanent

rip or headland rip and these are rips that are pushed against the headland and they're

there almost all the time. So it is another good reason to always be careful when you're

swimming close to headlands and rocks. If there's no lifeguards or flags at a beach,

the simple rule is DON'T GO IN. If you do go in, make sure you are an experienced swimmer

or surfer, make sure you are always with somebody, and make sure you know how to spot rips.