Deadly Danger: Rip Currents

Every year, rip currents pull about 100 swimmers to their deaths, for the most part without a lifeguard in sight.

CBS News Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi explains that the rip currents are formed when water, wind and beach conditions combine to create rapidly moving channels of water that flow away from the shoreline, typically through narrow passages in a sandbar.

Alfonsi spoke with some scientists who are seeing what they can do to help, such as those at the University of Delaware's Center for Applied Coastal Research, where a wave tank recreates rip currents.

"Immediately, the dye begins to collect, condense, and begins to head offshore through the breaking wave pattern," says Assistant Professor Jack Puleo.

Researchers use the dyes and plastic floats to track the current, which typically lets up just beyond the breakers.

Which leads to some basic advice from Puleo: "Don't panic. Let the rip current carry you out. Don't fight it. Once you get out past the breaker zone, then paddle along the beach, and you'll come back in, and you'll actually have the waves helping you, essentially trying to push you back to shore. ...You can't beat the current. It just can't be done."

The wave tank scenarios are used in conjunction with computer models to better understand what's happening on the beach, where researchers also hope video images could soon help both lifeguards and swimmers.

"They could watching, essentially, the entire stretch of coastline in their town, and trying to decide if there are hotspots and places they have to look out for," observes the University of Deleware's Prof. James Kirby.

Posted signs now warn beachgoers how to avoid rip currents.Alfonsi also visited Dawn Scurlock, whose son, Josh, fell victim to a rip current.

"He loved the beach from the time he was little. He was always drawn to the water," she says.

Josh moved from their Sheridan, Ind. home last year to fulfill his dream of living by the Florida coast.

Dawn told Alfonsi, "I said, 'Josh, please, please respect the water.' And he said, 'Mom, I'm a good swimmer.' And I said, 'Honey, I know you're a good swimmer, but even an Olympic swimmer can drown in the ocean."

Nick Recktenwald was swimming with Josh last November before they were both caught in a dangerous rip current.

"We were just having the time of our life," he recalls. "It was pretty rough. The whole thing was, it just felt like I kept going out instead of coming in."

Dawn is now raising awareness in the Midwest, through an educational video used in schools and produced in Josh's memory.

"If you don't know how a rip current works, how are you going to be able to save your own life?" she asks.

"I always knew (Josh) would be famous," she says, "but I didn't think it would be for the poster child of rip current awareness."

Dawn's efforts to reach out to her community is based on the fact that, like Josh, nearly two-thirds of those who drown off Florida's shores are from the inland states.