Story and photos by Joseph Sapia
RUMSON – With swimmer Michael Phelps racking up gold medals for Team USA in the Summer Olympics, it may be interesting to know he is much slower than a common Jersey Shore visitor.
Rip currents can move “two times as fast as an Olympic swimmer,” said Amy Williams, a coastal ecology extension agent for the Sandy Hook-based New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium.
That was one of the facts presented in “Ocean Hazards: Sharks and Rip Currents,” a children-oriented talk Williams did at the Oceanic Free Library, here, on Wednesday, Aug. 10.
A rip current is “a current of water that rips you away from the shore,” Williams said. When waves come in, the water has to go back out – the channeling of that outgoing water in one location is a rip current.
Aside from avoiding panic and swimming parallel to the shore, try to get a lifeguard’s attention if swimming in a rip current, Williams said. “Rip currents take you out to sea, but they stay on the surface,” she said. “They don’t go out very far.”
Mary Catherine O’Connor, 9, who lives in the borough, said she came away with new knowledge. “I learned sharks don’t mean to attack you and a lot about rip currents and how to be safe in them.” Her sister, Eleanor, 11, said she learned that to get out of a rip current: swim parallel to the shore to escape the narrow funneling of water.
Margot O’Connor of Rumson holds her daughter, Claire, 6, while attending a talk at the Oceanic Free Library, Rumson. O’Connor is vice president of the library association.
The children also learned that a swimmer is safer if using a flotation device, and panic is a main reason people get in trouble in rip currents.
Williams talked about shark attacks.
In 2015, for example, there were 96 reported shark attacks worldwide, with only six deaths from these, Williams said. Of the 300 to 400 species of sharks, only three – great white, bull and tiger – are known to attack humans, she said.
“They’re a little scary, but if you know more about them, you can be respectful, not fearful,” said Williams, a post-doctoral coastal ecologist at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken.
In a shark encounter, do not splash because the shark could take it for prey, such as a seal, Williams said.
Teresa Sperber, a member of the board of the Library Association, which does fundraising and programming for the library, said she arranged Williams’ talk because she was familiar with Sea Grant after two of her children – Paul, 12, and Cecilia, 8 – attended camp at Sea Grant this summer. “I thought it was very informative,” Sperber said. “I think the kids learned a lot in a fun style,” Sperber said. About 20 children and five adults attended.
Williams conducts two other programs for the community, a for-adults version of the one presented at the library and another on dune management, also for adults. Williams can be reached through Sea Grant, 732-872-1300, or at Amy.Williams@stevens.edu.
