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This year, 19 people have died on U.S. beaches due to rip currents. Experts in the Northeast offer tips for surviving rip currents.

Photograph by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Diving in the ocean isn’t always the safest activity. While many people fear sharks and other creatures lurking beneath the waves, they are more at risk of falling victim to a rip current.

According to the National Weather Service, these violent events have caused 19 deaths on American beaches this year.

“The stronger the current, the more dangerous it will be,” said Cristina Schultz, Foley Family Assistant Professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences at Northeastern University.

Rip currents are created by iterations of waves breaking near the shore, according to Dalton Sasaki, an oceanographer and postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern. The varying heights of these waves mean that they don’t all have the same distribution of water. Near the shore, this can cause a buildup, which then spills out into the ocean, often at a particular point, creating a powerful rip current.

“Rip currents are perpendicular to the topography,” Sasaki explains. “They go out to sea. They are generated by wave interactions.”

Rip currents occur on many beaches in the United States.

“They’re really hard to predict because they’re not going to be the same on every beach,” Schultz said.

Sasaki said that while there is no definitive way to predict where rip currents will occur, they are common in areas where there are man-made structures that interfere with the tide, as well as on the West Coast, which has more underwater canyons.

Some rip currents are easily identifiable, Sasaki said. A darker area of brown, sandy water without breaking waves or foam or dark water flowing through the surf zone is an indicator of a rip current. But there are weaker currents that don’t have those telltale signs but can still carry a person far from shore if they get caught in them.

If you get caught in a rip current, the best thing to do is avoid swimming directly toward shore, said Steve Vollmer, chair and associate professor of marine and environmental sciences at Northeastern University, who has worked as a professional lifeguard for Huntington City Beach.

“The main problem with rip current is that when people get caught in the current, they feel like they’re being swept away by the sea,” Vollmer added. “They panic and swim straight to shore, which is like swimming against the current of a river. It’s the panic that causes people to drown.”

The best way to save your life if you’re caught in a rip current is to let the current carry you out to sea and call for help, Vollmer said. You can also swim sideways out of the current and back to shore, but that will only work for strong swimmers.

“The best prevention is to not get caught in a rip current,” Vollmer said.

The first instinct of many people who see someone else caught in a rip current is to try to save them, but Vollmer said that’s not the right solution either. Without a flotation device, the person you’re trying to save could easily pull you into the current alongside them.

To avoid rip currents, Vollmer said swimmers should stay in the water no deeper than waist-deep.

“If there is a strong current, you can quickly find yourself carried above your chest and find yourself swimming without being able to get out,” he added. “Even if you are a good swimmer, it is difficult to save someone without any equipment. So prevention is definitely the best solution.”

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