Identifying Rips and Beach Usage at Unpatrolled Beaches

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’. The idea was to try and understand the risks involved for those who visit unpatrolled beaches when it comes to rip currents.

The project involved establishing remote trail cameras at a number of unpatrolled beaches in NSW – these are cheap, off the shelf cameras that (with some image processing help from WRL) provide locations of rip currents as well as counts of beach user numbers both on the beach and in the water at regular time intervals. The purpose of this study is to identify critical times, both on a daily, weekly and seasonal basis, that people are visiting and entering the water at unpatrolled beaches in the proximity of rip currents.

There’s been a ton of interest in this study – particularly in terms of the beach user counting – and ongoing image analysis is being undertaken to improve the beach counting technique. More cameras will be installed at various locations in 2021. The picture shows the view from our Merry Beach camera on the NSW south coast.