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- [00:02]
Emily Gracie
Perfect. Blue skies, warm sand between your toes, the rhythmic sound of waves inviting you into the crystal clear water. Spring break at its finest. But in just moments, paradise becomes peril. Each stroke toward shore somehow pushes you further out. The beach is getting smaller, voices fading. In a panic, you attempt to swim towards shore, but it's exhausting. In that moment, you realize survival is not guaranteed. This is a rip current, and it's just one of many hazards facing beachgoers today. We're going off the radar and diving deep into the invisible dangers that lurk just beyond the shoreline.
- [00:51]
Bruckner Chase
If we do not really know how to understand what's going on out there, the decisions we make may make a situation more dangerous.
- [01:01]
Emily Gracie
I'm meteorologist Emily Gracie, and you're listening to off the Radar, a production of the National Weather Desk. On the show, we dig deep into topics about weather, climate, the ocean, space, and much more. Our goal is to help you better understand the weather and to love it as much as we do.
- [01:20]
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- [02:22]
Emily Gracie
Beachgoers head to the coast, excited for the surf and the sun. But beneath those beautiful blue waves lies potential killers that most people don't understand. Rip currents. These powerful, narrow channels of water can drag even strong swimmers out to sea in minutes. Greg Dusek is a senior scientist with NOAA's National Ocean Service.
- [02:44]
Greg Dusek
Rip currents are caused by waves, so anywhere you have breaking waves, you can have rip currents. So that means you know, along all your ocean coastlines, of course, but then also in the Great Lakes, which a lot of people don't think about, and they're caused by the variability in how waves are breaking along shore. And so the typical way that that might happen is when you have a sandbar near the beach, right? I'm sure people have gone to the beach, know that, you know, you can kind of go out a little bit. You see kind of a shallower area where the sand builds up. That sandbar changes how waves are breaking. And so if you sit there and watch at the beach for a while, you'll notice that waves tend to break more over the bar. And that's because the water's shallower. There's. Whereas what you will often have is you have a bar, and then you might have a channel in it. So a deeper spot in the bar, and where you have that channel, it's deeper. And so then waves aren't breaking. And what ends up happening is where you have waves breaking, you have something shoreward of where the waves break, so they break, and then shoreward of that, the water level rises. And if you've been at the beach, you notice this because you'll see when a wave breaks, then the water kind of pushes upshore. And if you do that over a few different breaking waves, you end up with higher water levels where waves are breaking more. And then in those channel areas where it's deeper and the waves really aren't breaking as much, the water level is lower. And so, as everyone knows, right, water wants to flow downhill. So it tends to flow from those areas of high breaking waves to low and then offshore and forming a rip current. And that's kind of one of the more common ones caused by the shape of the bottom. But you can cause similar changes in breaking waves by structures. So they often occur near jetties or piers, sometimes even when you have just waves. And it could be a flat bottom, but, you know, waves might come from different angles, say one from the south, one out of the north, and then they kind of intersect near shore. And that can set up those same kind of variations and breaking waves that you get from, like, bathymetry or the shape of the bottom. But those we call transient rips because they can come and go. They can be there for a few minutes or even a few seconds and then go away. And they can move alongshore. And so those can be especially dangerous. But in the end, it's all about breaking waves.
- [04:55]
Emily Gracie
And while coastline structure matters, weather and tides can also play a huge role.
- [05:01]
Greg Dusek
When you have strong winds over the ocean for an extended period of time, you start building up your waves. And so then, you know, the bigger the waves, generally speaking, the stronger the rip currents. I think what people need to Remember is that you don't necessarily need to have the weather right where you are, right? So you might have a hurricane hundreds and hundreds of miles away making really big waves. But then where you are, it could be really nice and no wind at all. But those waves come from where that hurricane is. They travel to you. And so you can have a perfectly nice sunny day, but pretty big waves and then still have hazardous rip currents. Tide plays a role and often it's at low tide. At low tide, you know, that sandbar is pretty close to the water surface, let's say. And so waves are really breaking over it pretty in a pronounced way, really causing those alongshore changes in breaking waves. You could have that same location a few hours later at high tide. And the waves, it's deep enough over the bar that the waves aren't breaking at all. They just break right on shore. And then you can have no rip currents. So you can have times at the beach where, you know, you might show up in the morning. It's at high tide, there's no rip current. You think it's safe? Well, a few hours later, the tide drops, waves start breaking over that sandbar and you could have a really strong rip and a potential hazard. So things can change rapidly. And the tide is definitely one of the reasons why.
- [06:19]
Emily Gracie
But rip currents aren't the only danger at the beach. One large wave is enough to knock you off your feet and pull you underwater, wondering which way is up and fighting for air. So today I'm going to talk with an ocean safety expert, Bruckner Chase. He's an experienced lifeguard who has faced drowning firsthand.
- [06:37]
Bruckner Chase
I can remember being on that bottom and not being able to do anything to get my head back above the water. A lifeguard jumped in and brought me back up again.
- [06:46]
Emily Gracie
He'll share some personal stories and offer advice on what to look for the minute you step out onto the beach. And then I'm going to be talking with Greg Dusek again to hear about a groundbreaking new AI powered app that could be a game changer in ocean safety. This is a potentially life saving conversation that could make the difference between a memorable vacation and a tragic headline. So before you embark on your spring break trip to the shore, take a listen.
- [07:17]
Bruckner Chase
Rucker Chase, I'm so glad to have you on the show today. This is such an important topic at such an important time of year. You and I go way back at this point. I feel like I've talked to you so much about this, but kind of on a personal level, like We've gone swimming together and I've learned a lot from you in the ocean. So I want you to share your knowledge with our listeners today too and kind of talk about what we need to know going into spring break because that is coming up. Tell me a little bit about you first and your background and what, what it is you do.
- [07:46]
It's always a loaded but exciting question. I, I used to work on the more corporate side of things and then a while back I got pulled into doing some stuff with the part of Noah that over are special marine sanctuary areas, marine protected areas, national marine sanctuaries. And that led me to doing some work in American Samoa where we were hoping or one of the goals was to connect people to these amazing places, American Samoa being one of them but also help make people more confident and comfortable in the water. In American saw more there wasn't a lot of infrastructure to teach swimming lessons and have people become more proficient at actually moving through the water and stuff. So we were down there sharing some tools so that when they're on a beach by themselves with no lifeguards or no one else around, they can make good decisions to protect themselves and protect family and jump forward 15 years. Kind of like we're talking about like right now that people heading to a beach on spring break, how do we give them the tools and the decision making processes to keep themselves safe? So connecting communities to our oceans where you know the tag phrase where weather, water, waves and people meet so that every experience at the beaches is positive. So our foundation works on making ocean opportunities more accessible to everyone, especially those with special physical needs, as well as keeping everyone who may be looking out over a body of water in an open water environment or in the natural environment, helping them assess what's going on in front of them, translate what they're seeing to what their capacity might be in the water, which is really important as we know what swimming means to me may not mean mean the same to someone who's really hasn't spent a lot of time in the ocean or in the open water. So you know, kind of building that common experience so that ideally we can prevent dangerous situations from happening. So that is, that is what I'm focused on all the time with you know, friends like you and, and partners with Noah as we're you know looking at creating a new film series called Blue IQ specifically to make people smarter around the ocean. So this is going to be a fun conversation between the two of us.
- [10:01]
I have a lot of stuff I want to talk about and I know that we're going to focus kind of on rip currents today, but there's, and you've taught me this, there's so much more going on in the ocean. Can you talk about some of the other stuff that's happening in the ocean that can be really problematic?
- [10:16]
You and I have talked, you know, being from a meteorologist background and me working with weather service and you know, the whole, the environment of the ocean. And I think one of the things we really want to talk about too is the social science side of this. And really one of the most dangerous things in the ocean may be us. If we do not really know how to understand what's going on out there, the decisions we make may make a situation more dangerous. And I think that we want to make it so that sometimes people make the decision. It's not a good day to go into the water and really looking at the individual, the social side of what is really dangerous in the water. I'm an ocean lifeguard and experienced open water swimmer. So what might not be a risk to me could be deadly to someone else. And I think that, you know, some of the things that are out there, you know, we can talk about submerged objects and changing tides and then changing and not understanding the bottom contour going into the water, near jetties or piers where they're swirling currents or where the weather may be impacting the near shore environment, all of are physical elements. But how we decide whether or not we should be out there or not, which is kind of a social question, is really what makes things either dangerous or safe, I think.
- [11:39]
Okay, so let's say it's spring break and you and a bunch of your friends are on the beach, you're enjoying some cocktails. How do you educate yourself and the people around you when you're in a situation like that? How does a college student stand up and say, hey guys, I don't think we should go in the water right now? That's a kind of a tough outlier position to be in.
- [11:57]
Always the first, first reference point. If you're going to a new location or a beach you haven't been to before, or, you know, you're a freshman and you're going to Florida for the first time with friends, you know, the place to swim is always going to be in front of a lifeguard. Always going to be the first choice. But also knowing that sometimes spring break, well before summer, there may not be as many lifeguards on duty or some lifeguard agencies may not be up and running, depending on where you are, but finding local information, Not a weather forecast that covers that area, but specific for that beach. Knowing the tides, knowing the forecast for that specific location, not necessarily an Airport that's 20 miles away, but for that beach in that location there so that you know what's coming and know what's in front of you and what might change during the course of the day, and know that, you know, sometimes it's. It's better to stay on the sand, but if you don't know, don't go.
- [12:53]
Is there value in, like, going in up to your knees, kind of chill in the water and enjoy it, but, you know, don't go out where you could get more hurt?
- [13:01]
Absolutely. And I think it's always a good idea to kind of err on the side of. Of reducing the risk and knowing also that, you know, when I was in college, I was gonna. I was gonna push the envelope. I was. I was gonna go out and do stuff. I wanted to have fun. I wanted to go play in the waves. So we know that that's, you know, that's kind of a default for, you know, spring break. We want to go out, we want to have fun. We want to plan that. And I think that what you talk about, staying knee deep, staying where you can touch, and really being aware. And this is important situational awareness, Knowing that the ocean environment is dynamic, it might have changed from the year before. If you always go back to the same place and know that you may be able to stand up right here, but if you move 20 yards to your right, it may be deeper. There may be a hole there. There could be a rip current there. What we were talking about, there could be a gap in the sandbar, and all of a sudden you're standing and you're fine. You're popping up over waves. And then all of a sudden, one wave picks up and there's a current that kind of takes you along the beach. All of a sudden, now you come down and your feet don't touch the bottom. And knowing that that can happen because it's a dynamic environment, it's not, you know, planned out. Like, the pool is, where there's a very gradual decline from the shallow into the be rocks. There could be jellyfish. There could be stuff that's not expected. And if you end up in an unexpected situation, we also tell people the most important thing you can bring with you into the ocean is a calm state of mind. So if you are, wow, this isn't what I expected. We usually tell people it's Easier said than done. Try to stay calm, relax, signal to someone else. Look and see which direction the current's taking you, where are the waves? And try to navigate back to a safe place.
- [14:46]
Yeah, stay calm is a, that's a tough one. It's like when your spouse tells you to stay calm. Right?
- [14:52]
Yeah. You and I were out off the beach in, in Myrtle beach in situations that were a little intimidating. And I think staying calm, like we said, easier. Easier said than done. I think we had some other meteorologists went out with us that were like, yeah, this is, this is a really, a little bit scary. And that was. We weren't out in rip currents. That was just the waves and the wind and it was just a, a torn up swash zone. That area near the shore where the waves wash up and back out again.
- [15:23]
Yeah, I want to talk about that because. So you did this course where you took a bunch of meteorologists out into the ocean. Kind of taught us how to, you know, read the ocean, what to look for, you know, some safety things. And there was like this safety and numbers thing that first day, right. And we're out there and I felt totally safe. I felt great. You had like multiple people with like flotation devices around. I was like, this is a piece of cake. Then a couple days later you're like, well, let's go, let's go swim. So your wife and me, this last words coming from me, swimming and we. And that was a lot more intimidating. It felt different to me at that point. There were less of us. We were farther out. We were head down in the water. And also, like, I didn't, I didn't have a good grasp on, like, where we were, where we were going. I consider myself a strong swimmer, so I can only imagine for somebody who maybe isn't a strong swimmer, what that must be like. But I also have questions for you, and I don't want to generalize genders, but, you know, you talk about people and how spring break, you were out there kind of just like going for it. I see a huge difference when it comes to men and women taking risks in the water. And I'm curious if that translates statistically to incidents that you deal with.
- [16:42]
If you look at the social science studies, there is more of a risk taking element, usually with males rather than females, but also just with the neurological brain development, that frontal decision making part of the brain, that we're more prone to take risks, you know, before the age of about 22 or 23. And then that decision making process matrix Starts to kind of temper down some of that risk taking behavior. So yes, there is a male and female component and there can be outliers, there can be exceptions to that, there can be learned traits where a woman may be more of a risk taker than a male counterpart, that right, that is standing right next to her. But then also as we get older, that risk taking decision making changes as well. So you know, with younger people, if you're a parent and you're worried about whether or not your 18 year old is going to make the same wise decision that you do, chances are they won't. You know, we're really excited in this new film series we're working on with Noah. We're using college athletes and we're filming them in their field of play, on the court, on the field, wherever they are, the masters of their athletic domain. But then when it comes to going out in the ocean, it's like, wow, I don't know. This environment, it's very, very different. And no matter how fit and strong and experienced you may be as a high school or college athlete or someone who's really fit and really strong in a land based activity, it may not translate into an ocean environment. And that's the same for swimmers as well. Like what you were talking about. You swim as a regular exercise where you live, you go to the pool all the time. You and I have talked about swimming, but out in the ocean where there isn't a wall or a marker on the depth and all that. And if you look at information from the American Red cross, more than 50% of Americans state that they could not pass some of the basic swim requirements for an American Red Cross swimming test, which is keeping their head above water and swimming maybe 25 meters. So if you're looking at getting pulled out in a rip current or even needing to navigate back to shore, you could have to swim 200 meters without a wall, without even knowing when you're going to get to safety because you can't tell just from assessing that. So it's really important that we know what we know about the ocean. But then also as much as we can develop self awareness for what could we or can we do if we're in a dangerous situation?
- [19:11]
And it's interesting you say 200 meters for me, I think, okay, well that's nothing. I do that, no problem all the time. But there is such a huge difference in swimming 200 meters panicked versus not panicked like that. Calm 200 meters, no problem. But like when we were out swimming in the Ocean. And I'm not an open water swimmer by any means. It was exhausting and we went so much of a shorter distance than what I'm used to.
- [19:36]
Yeah. And most people have a hard time a, it's hard to estimate distance across the water because you look across, you know, the field. I'm looking out the window here. You, you know how tall a stop sign is or you know how tall a fire hydrant is. So you can judge distance based on familiar objects, but when you're looking out across the ocean and there's no element there, it's like, is that 100 meters offshore or is that half a mile offshore? Those reference points are gone. So it's harder to really judge. And when you're standing on the dunes or on the sand and you're, you know, 5ft, 6ft tall, your eyes are up over and you're looking down at the water, it's a lot different than when you're looking back towards the beach and the water's right here. And it doesn't take much more than a, about a 10 mile an hour wind that's blowing towards the beach or along the beach to now create a really turbulent, white capped surface of the water. That's going to be so much harder than most people expect to be to swim through and to get your face up above the water to breathe. It's, it's not going to be like it was swimming at the pool indoors in the city where you, where you came from.
- [20:46]
I was talking to the National Hurricane center not too long ago and they have repeatedly brought up the fact that they're working so much on mortality rates and preventing death when it comes to hurricanes. And one thing that they're still struggling with is rip currents. And so they're still losing people in rip currents. As much as they are getting the message out about these other hazards in a hurricane, that's something they're struggling with. What's the answer there? How, I mean, you're working with noaa, but what, how can we get people to understand the dangers more?
- [21:18]
I think it's important that they understand the dangers of that nearshore environment that's impacted by even offshore hurricanes. They're going to be creating, you know, short period waves. Perhaps the wind that might be associated with that storm is going to make the surface of the water really difficult to navigate. Depending upon what the contour of the bottom is or jetties or piers. Any water that's flowing around from a swell that's coming from the hurricane or something that's generated by the wind is going to make really difficult to read and understand currents. There may be a rip current that is kind of traditional to what Noah's rip current survival guide talks about, that's flowing straight out, and you can see that. But there might be longshore currents or feeder currents or flash rip currents. So we're already naming two or three different types of currents or rip currents. And people go, well, how do I understand all that? How do I know? And the answer is, unless you are at the ocean all the time. I'm a professional ocean lifeguard as well, so I see this. It's part of my daily life. And you cannot learn to read this and understand it and see it unless you really are there all the time. Even in the basic rip current survival guide, they tell you a to relax, which is tough to do, as we talked about, when you've got waves and wind and all this stuff hitting you and you're trying to stay afloat. And then they say, well, we'll swim, you know, perpendicular to the current, or swim out of the current and then back in. But if you're pulled 75 meters out and now you've got to swim along the beach and now you got to swim back in navigating, now you're in breaking waves that are driving you under. That amount of just distance to swim is beyond what most people can do. And when you add in the fact that you might be holding your breath because you're being held on by the wall, by the waves, or there might be jetties or hazards that now you have to navigate around, it's already putting people in a situation where it's just not realistic that most people will be able to get through that. And I think that the most important thing we can do is make it cool or make it pure acceptable to not go in the water. The ocean can be an intimidating, scary place. It's better to kind of err on the side of this could be dangerous, and this could be dicey. And I don't want to cut my spring break short.
- [23:41]
I. I can't imagine there's like an easy way to track if an incident is. Is rip current related or something else. Do you think that things get lumped into that category of rip current, and that's kind of like the. Just that general ocean hazard category when we call like a rip current incident. Do you think that there's other stuff happening there too?
- [24:01]
Yes, absolutely. I think that based on our experience in and around the ocean for a long period of time, there are rip currents. And they are, they can be dangerous, especially not necessarily if they're moving really fast, but they're subtle. So now you're getting pulled out further than you expect. And it happened so slowly, you didn't, you didn't see it happening. If you look at research or data that Surf Life Saving Australia puts out, they have a very, very robust network of about 300 plus surf life saving clubs around Australia. Very standardized in how they assess situations, how they rescue, how they set up. And what they found is only about 50% of the fatalities are related directly to rip currents. Here in the US where someone says, oh, it was a rip current, often that's someone who wasn't on the beach at that time assigning what they think happened. And I know I have seen some fatalities or non fatal drownings and looked back at ocean conditions. It was attributed to a rip current and it may have been. But I also look at the coastal forecast at that time and often I've seen winds that were 20 miles an hour blowing along the shore, probably creating really dangerous cross beach currents. Looking at short period like really fast waves coming in that were three to four feet in height. The weather forecasting offices near shore conditions would have made it challenging for me to even swim through. Like it would have made for a really dicey and dangerous near shore swash zone condition based on just wind and swells and all that. And I think some people may get into trouble even before maybe they end up in a rip current that then pulls them out.
- [25:53]
Do you think that's problematic? Do you think that we're putting too much emphasis on rip currents because we're categorizing them as that way when people maybe should be looking out for other things?
- [26:03]
Yes. And I think it's really important for anyone communicating about coastal safety to recognize yes, there are rip currents. And if we know it was a rip current, telling people how to get out of a rip current is important. They need to swim perpendicular to the current and then navigate back in. That's important. But there was an instance earlier last year where someone was rescued and they were almost a half a mile offshore. I don't remember the exact distances, but they were half mile offshore. And the original news reports said they were caught in a rip current. And I was asked to look into this by a broadcaster and we wanted to talk about this on air. And it turns out that this person went into the water at an inlet between one of the barrier islands and a large inland body of water that was flowing out into the Ocean and they went out right at this point at that inlet during an outgoing tide. And so what they were caught in was an outgoing tidal current that took them a quarter to a half mile offshore. Also in the Pacific Northwest, there was a drowning that was attributed to a rip current. Where really in the Pacific Northwest, if you are going to the beach to walk around and just look at the tide pools and explore that near shore environment, they have sneaker waves, which are larger ocean waves that come much further up the beach than most people are experiencing. As they're walking along, they may travel 100 meters further up the beach and then sweep everything in their path back out into the ocean. So a, it probably wasn't a rip current, but if it was that they eventually got into. Now you're fully clothed in jeans and a jacket in 54 degree water where you may not even have a beach to swim back to because it's a cliff right next to where you got pulled out to. So I think it's really important for meteorologists and communicators to go, if it was a rip current, this is how you get out of a rip current. If it was a tidal current, there was this. If it was Pacific Northwest and a sneaker wave, this is how you get out of that. Because the goal should always be how do we stop this incident from happening again?
- [28:18]
Sometimes I feel like people don't get it until they know someone or see something really bad happen. You're a lifeguard. You have been for a long time. Is there any incident that you've been involved in that you want to share with us that might get that point across of just how dangerous things can be even if they don't seem like they're going to be?
- [28:41]
Yeah, I, before the age of 10, I was rescued from drowning twice. And the first time I was probably five or six years old, I fell off a dock into a lake by a marina. And this was after I'd had swim lessons in a pool. Swim lessons help. It's important that everyone have access to learn how to swim. But what's also really important, and we see some countries like Canada focusing not on teaching someone how to swim, competitive strokes, but survival swimming. What do you do if you end up in the water when you didn't mean to be there? That happened in a, in a lake environment and then also in a pool environment. I was holding onto a float, someone pulled the float away from me. I went straight to the bottom. I can remember being on that bottom and not being able to do anything to get my head back above the water. A lifeguard jumped in and brought me back up again. That was over 40 years ago. And I remember that feeling and that experience.
- [29:44]
Biggest misconceptions when it comes to water safety, what do you see floating around out there in the media and social media that we are just getting wrong?
- [29:53]
We ask people if they can swim, and we don't recognize that being able to swim is a subjective assessment. And I think you may remember one of the first times I talked to the group of meteorologists, we said, how many of you can swim? And everyone raises their hand. And then we showed a video of someone swimming in a remote area of the Pacific with huge waves and stuff going over, over, all over the place. And I go, okay, now how many could swim through this? And, like, no hands go up. And I think one of the most important things we can do is we cannot tell people to get out of a rip current, just float on your back and then swim in. Because we need to recognize that swimming in a pool where you learned how to swim or in a controlled environment is a lot different than swimming in dynamic conditions where you might need to swim two or three times further than you've ever swum before. And I think it's really important that we recognize the social science side of things, and let's not assume that swimming means the same thing for everyone. And I think that we cannot assume that when we say, make sure you know how to swim, as universally applied to, I'm going to be safe in the ocean. Because what we need to do is know how to swim in a way that is compatible with the conditions that are right out in front of you.
- [31:12]
Okay, so now that you've thoroughly scared me and perhaps everybody listening, I want to know how to have a good relationship with the ocean. If you have a fear. If you are someone who's like, no, no, no, I think I'm never going in again after all this. How do we have that good relationship with the ocean? How do we enjoy it safely and feel good about getting in the water?
- [31:33]
The ocean is an amazing place to be. And, you know, people get afraid of sharks or get afraid of. Of one thing or another. And I often tell people, too, some of our rookie lifeguards, that sometimes the scariest thing out in the ocean is what we bring with us in our own heads. So what I always tell people is a healthy amount of respect is more important. So respect the ocean. Always respect the ocean. It's an amazing place. If you want to spend time there, kind of like if you want to learn how to scuba dive and see amazing underwater reefs and stuff, you don't go out and buy a scuba tank and then go off the beach. You go and sign up for scuba lessons and you learn how to do it safely and then you buy the equipment and you go out and you have these amazing experiences. And I would suggest taking that same approach to learning how to do whichever you want to do at the ocean. Let's say you, you want to learn how to surf, sign up for a lesson, have someone who's experienced with it teach you how to read the waves, how to read the water. There's some great resources in NOAA's Wave Safe series, where we show people how to enter and exit the water, going underneath the waves, cutting through the waves, how to understand that. So those film series, there's one for the Pacific Northwest, one for California, the East coast, that'll help you kind of understand certain things. But the ocean is an amazing place. Going to the beach is an amazing way to spend spring break. And if you do it and just make sure that you're self aware and then aware of the changing environment and respect it all the time, it's a blast. And you can take those risks because you understand how to get back to shore.
- [33:16]
Is there anything else you want to share, Bruckner, about the ocean and staying safe this spring?
- [33:21]
I think what's also really important, we talked about rip currents and how people get into trouble. One of the things that is a real issue, and the hurricane center may or may not have brought this up, is second victim drownings. We also call it drowning for love, where a friend or a son or a daughter or a parent is in trouble in the ocean and the emotional response is charge out and save them. And then too often, the would be rescuer ends up being the one that drowns. Or sadly, both people end up experiencing a fatal drowning. So take a look at NOAA's Wavesafe Take 10, which is basically a call to action. Pause for 10 seconds before you go charging out of the water. Call 91 1, activate an emergency response, see if you can help someone from shore, help them stay calm, get them to stay relaxed until professional rescuers arrive. But I would never, even as a lifeguard, charge out into the water without having a flotation device or a plan in place that I can protect myself first to save someone else.
- [34:27]
Emily Gracie
Okay, so we've learned about why we need to be prepared when we head to the beach. But let's now talk about the new science and technology that's going to help us spot these hazards when we get there. Greg Dusek from NOAA has been working with a team of researchers to utilize AI and machine learning to spot rip currents.
- [34:49]
Greg Dusek
So one of the challenges with rip currents is being able to measure them because, you know, you would like to be able to go put a sensor in the water, but at the beach, that's really hard to do because, you know, big waves, the sands moving around, you can put it in there and it could be completely covered a few days later. So we can't really use traditional oceanographic methods to capture rips. And so for a lot of our work, we've relied on lifeguards. You know, lifeguards are human observers, and they, out of anyone, can really spot when there's a rip current. And so we've been partnering with a bunch of great lifeguarding agencies throughout the years, and they've collected data for us about when rip currents are happening or when they're not. And that's the primary data source we've used to be able to train our models. But obviously that's not ideal because lifeguards have other things to do at the beach. Right. And they're not always there. They're only there, you know, in some places in the summertime and during the day. And so we wanted to find other ways we could collect information about when and where rip currents were occurring. And one way you can do that is through cameras. And, you know, a lot of people are probably familiar with webcams. You know, if you. If you've gone surfing or if you go to the beach and stay at your hotel, it probably has a webcam showing you the beach. And so they're everywhere. And what we wanted to do was see if we could use that camera imagery to. To tell us when a rip current was occurring. And so we've done that in a few different ways now, but we're using AI and in all of them. But the one that we're kind of first developed and the one that we have running at a few cameras right now is using object detection. So much like a lot of people are familiar with this now. You know, you use your phone and you want to find pictures that have your dog in it or your cat in it, right? Your phone's using object detection to figure out what images those are and where your dog is in the image. And sometimes it puts, like, a box around it or something. Well, we can do the same thing with rip currents. We've trained a model by Going through manually and labeling boxes around thousands of pictures of rip currents. And then we can use that information to train an AI model to tell us when there's a rip current in a picture and then in a video by combining a bunch of frames in a video together. And so it basically just puts a bounty box around a rip current if it sees it. And, and we've been testing it out and it works pretty well in some cases. And, and we're working on trying to improve, improve it moving forward.
- [37:15]
Bruckner Chase
And when I spoke to you guys.
- [37:17]
Emily Gracie
Last, there was talk of one day.
- [37:19]
Bruckner Chase
In the future there might be an app now enter Rip Finder. Can you tell me about that? Because, you know, I think the first thought process is like, this is going to save lives. But is it also kind of a crowdsourcing tool?
- [37:31]
Greg Dusek
Yeah. So, you know, once we started with it using webcams, because webcams are pretty easy in terms of dealing with the data because they're stationary. We can collect video over an extended period of time and it makes it easier to deal with that data. But once we, our team, and really the team at UC Santa Cruz was the lead on this, once they developed a method that could be done on cameras, it was like, okay, well where else can we use this? And we've done it on drones and done it with mobile devices. So using the same kind of approach, of kind of that object detection approach I was talking about before, you can take your phone, you can hold it up to the beach in real time and it will show you where it thinks a rip current is, putting a little box around it. And we've been testing it out with users in California. California Sea Grant's been helping us out with that as well and some lifeguard groups to be able to test it it and it's showing pretty good performance. And what we would like to do is, I think, you know, not necessarily use it for, you know, people shouldn't be making public safety, life saving choices based off the app. But what we want to do is try to give a way for people to see a rip current and then be able to understand what that looks like in real life. So if they're standing there at the beach, okay, these are features I need to be worried about and hopefully just have another way to reach people while they're at the beach and give them more information about what a rip current looks like and how they can identify one.
- [38:56]
Bruckner Chase
Cool.
- [38:57]
Emily Gracie
So it's kind of in the testing phase now.
- [38:58]
Bruckner Chase
Is there a thought process, timelines on when this may actually be something that public uses.
- [39:04]
Greg Dusek
They're hoping to roll it out for public testing at some point in the near future. And so it would be through the app stores that people use for their particular device. But I think it's going to have a pretty long testing phase to make sure that it's working as we expect it to work. And whatever limitations there are, those are not appropriately. And I think what else I would say is, you know, it just gives us another chance to reach people as well with public safety information. You know, one of the things that is that we try to do is, is we want people to understand, you know, see the forecast and understand what a rip current is, how to get out of one. You know, what you should do if you have a, a loved one caught in one. And you know, we can get that information to people maybe before they get to the beach, but you know, the next time we have maybe to share that is is people have their phone out and maybe they use this app and they could say, oh, I want to learn more about rip currents. And that provides another means to just reach the public and hopefully get life saving information to them.
- [40:00]
Bruckner Chase
Is it going to be or is it already being tested on the East Coast? Cause I can imagine that the rip.
- [40:04]
Emily Gracie
Currents look different on different coastlines.
- [40:06]
Bruckner Chase
Right?
- [40:06]
Greg Dusek
Great question. So, yeah, that's one of the challenges with any of these AI approaches is that, you know, you can train it in one place where rip currents might look a certain way. If you bring it somewhere else, does it work correctly or you do you need additional data and generally you want more data. And so we've done some testing on the east Coast. We actually started when this first prototype, we worked with some lifeguards in North Carolina and did they did some initial testing for us on the east Coast. So, so we've tested it in different locations, but I think, you know, as it continues to progress and as we collect more and more data, it will continue to get better in terms of being used in different locations.
- [40:41]
Bruckner Chase
Well, I am a frequent beachgoer of South Carolina where there are no lifeguards. So if you ever need somebody to test it out here, I'm happy to do that for.
- [40:50]
Greg Dusek
Great. We'll take you up on that for sure.
- [40:51]
Bruckner Chase
Greg, is there anything else you want to add about rip Finder or your research in general?
- [40:56]
Greg Dusek
Well, I mean, I guess I would just say, you know, I think this type of research I think just points to the value of NOAA and what we're able to do by not just providing public safety information. But working with, you know, academic, nonprofit, private industry partners and fund really innovative work like this, which otherwise might not be possible. So, you know, we're able to make, make, I think, really important advancements with our partners and hopefully then that information benefits the public and increases awareness about hazards like rip currents and reduces drownings and potential fatalities.
- [41:32]
Bruckner Chase
Awesome. Greg, thank you so much for your time today.
- [41:34]
Greg Dusek
Sure thing. Thanks for having me.
- [41:38]
Emily Gracie
Off the Radar is a production of the National Weather Desk. Make sure you're following the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Web. Wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes publish every Tuesday. Also, off the Radar is now on Instagram. Make sure you give us a follow so you can see snippets from the show as well as lots of other great weather and climate content. Thank you to Bruckner Chase for his time and expertise today. Also, thank you to Greg Dusek and everyone at the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for the valuable life savings work they do every day. Thanks to the National Weather Desk and Sinclair Broadcast Group for their ongoing support of the podcast, as well as my associate producer Brian Petras for his help on today's episode. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracie. Make it a great day.