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Rip-roaring Channel

Rip currents pose a threat to public safety, so officials are interested in ways to predict when and where they form, but it’s difficult to study the dynamic and intermittent conditions that create rips. MIT/WHOI Joint Program student Melissa Moulton and colleagues in the PV Lab at WHOI undertook an unprecedented study—they used a landing craft to dredge a 150-foot long, 90-foot-wide channel in shallow water at a research beach in Duck, N.C., to induce the formation of rip currents. The team installed arrays of sensors in the surf zone to gather data that reveal insights into how rips form. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)