Lifeguard data has been used in drowning research since the 1980s, and a few challenges have previously been identified. However, what and how that information is recorded hasn’t been formally examined until now.

An important component of our NSW Government Water Safety Fund project ‘Identifying Rip Currents and Beach Usage at Unpatrolled Beach Locations’ was to conduct face to face surveys of beachgoers visiting the unpatrolled beaches monitored by the remote trail cameras.

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.