Chesapeake Quarterly
This issue of
Chesapeake Quarterly tells the story of lifeguards in Ocean City, Maryland, who daily try to spot killer rip currents before they can sweep swimmers out to sea.
It also tells the story of two Sea Grant-funded researchers who have perched video cameras atop the biggest hotel on the boardwalk to record waves and rip currents all day every day.
Both the lifeguards and the scientists are trying to predict when and where rip currents will occur. They know that most drownings on American beaches are rip current drownings.
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As the season’s first hurricanes swing near the U.S. coast, churning
out large waves, they bring the threat of dangerous rip currents all
along the Atlantic Seaboard.
Denise Breitburg’s journey into piles of old data stems from a bit of frustration. The Smithsonian Environmental Research (SERC) scientist spent the
summer of 2003 researching the role that Chesapeake Bay’s small inlets
play in the distribution of sea nettles — those pesky stinging jellyfish that send many a Bay swimmer scrambling for shore.