dr. ellen prager, a marine scientist. she's on skype which is a good thing. we can see her.d morning. >> good morning. >> here's the big problem. a lot of people don't know how to spot a rip current in order to get out of the way. how can you see one in order not to get sucked in? >> the problem is they are very difficult to see, especially if the surf is rough. there some are tell-tale signs. sometimes you'll see debris or a calmer spot. if the signs are up for rip currents, and they're going to be up for this fourth of july and the next few days along the east coast, truthfully, people should not go in the water. they are difficult to spot from the beach. >> what you don't want to do is swim toward the shore. you'll wear yourself out. but it does seem like it goes against instinct to swim either back out to sea or even sideways from the current. >> that's right. your immediate reaction is to try to get back to the beach as quick as possible. that would take you directly against this narrow jet of water. and typically they are pretty narrow. so the thing to do is, instead o

dr. ellen prager a manner scienti, t and author.f you can identify a rip current and you're in a rip current, that which you should do? >> that's right. when you get a rip current, it's a very strong narrow jet of water going from the beach offshore and your first reaction is to swim against it and that is exactly what you don't want to do. there tend to be very narrow. they form in sort of low areas on the beach. so if you swim parallel to shore along the beach, you should be able to get out of it and then you can swim back to shore. >> in these conditions that we are looking at right now, as arthur makes its way up the east coast, would these rip currents be any different than what we are normally accustomed to seeing during a day-to-day situation? >> rip currents occur when you have prolonged high onshore waves and wind. so what is probably going to happen is you're probably going to have more rip currents in more areas this time than normally because we have such a wide swath of the east coast being affected by hurricane arthur.