Surf and squid, compliments of Mother Nature’s whims

Surf’s up. Like, way up, dude. As we speak, read, write, whatever,

the local

beaches are hosting one of those impromptu spectaculars that

Mother Nature puts on now and then. I would have thought she’d be

exhausted after the fires in Arizona and Colorado, but I guess not.

Maybe she gets bored. She does her beach shows with waves, sand

and rocks, after an opening scene with a hurricane or an undersea

earthquake. This weekend, it’s a hurricane -- Hurricane Elida, which

is behaving badly about 1,000 miles southeast of us. When hurricanes

huff and puff, giant surf is what you get, even a thousand miles

away. If an undersea earthquake or landslide is massive enough, you

get a tsunami -- a towering wall of water that can travel along the

surface of the ocean at hundreds of miles an hour. When a tsunami

hits land, it’s a bad thing.

But this weekend, it’s the giant surf. Go see it, enjoy it, be

thrilled by it -- but unless you really know what you’re doing, stay

out of it. It can be very nasty indeed. For instance, last weekend,

fewer than 20 people had to be plucked from the water by local

lifeguards -- about average for a summer weekend. Last Thursday,

after the big surf got underway, around 200 people had to be rescued

on that day alone.

Riptides and undertows are the terrible twosome of big surf. Do

you know the difference? Write this down. Very interesting. When the

big waves start coming fast and thick -- too fast to allow the last

wave to slide back out to sea -- all that water piling up on the

beach has to go somewhere. The retreating waves move sideways,

searching for a weak spot in the oncoming barrage of waves to make

its escape. That’s a riptide, or what we marine scientists call a

“riptide.”

A riptide is an express train running along the beach, carrying

everything along with it, including you. If you get caught in a

riptide, stay calm, stay afloat and ride it out. Swim lengthwise

along the shore if you can. It will let you go sooner or later, and

you can make your way to shore. If you get worried, don’t hesitate to

do the “wave and shout” to get a lifeguard’s attention. Given the

choice between embarrassed and dead, I find most people will go with

embarrassed.

The worst thing to do is summon up all your strength and swim like

a demon directly toward shore. You’ll go nowhere, except straight

down when you’re totally exhausted, which will take about 20 seconds.

Undertows are underwater beasties that happen when the retreating

waves can’t find a weak spot to make their escape. In that case, they

sneak under the incoming waves, which means the express train is

running directly out to open water from the beach. If you’re in its

path, it’s “All aboard, next stop -- beyond the breakers.”

If you’ve been caught in an undertow, I suspect you remember it

well. I know I do. It was many summers ago. We were on the beach,

about halfway down the Balboa Peninsula. The surf wasn’t awesome, but

bigger than normal. I told the kids they had to stay on the wet sand,

where they could see their feet clearly. Being the large, wise

father-figure, I ventured out about 20 feet, with the surf still well

below my knees.

The kids yelled to ask if they could join me. “Oh no,” I said.

“You are just children, whereas I am a large, wise father-figure.

See? Very large, very wise.”

My very impressive parent-speech was cut short when the retreating

surf knocked my feet out from under me and dragged me along the sand

on my back -- which hurt like a you-know-what, I might add -- at

which point I realized I was caught in an undertow. I wasn’t overly

worried until my view of the sky was blocked out by an incoming wave,

which was cresting about 6 feet above my head. For what was at most

four seconds but seemed like four minutes, I was tossed underwater in

every direction, like a handkerchief in a wind tunnel. I had no idea

which way was up, down or sideways, and just hoped it didn’t slam me

head-first into the sand.

Finally, when it was through with me, I shot upward and through

the surface, like a Trident missile from a submarine launch. When I

staggered back on shore, the kids were cheering and jumping up and

down and wanted to know if I could do that again. I did not respond.

Of course, I suppose we should be grateful this isn’t La Jolla. We

have the giant surf, but they have the giant squid. Did you see that?

Hundreds of giant squid washed up on La Jolla’s beaches then went on

to their greater reward when they were unable to make it back to the

water. Yikes. I love calamari, but there is a limit.

“I don’t know why they are dying,” said State of California marine

biologist Annette Henry in a newspaper interview. “They seem to be

perfectly healthy squid.”

Yes, but just because you are a healthy squid, does not mean you

are a happy squid. At least they had the good taste to choose La

Jolla as their last stand. No one knows what goes on in the mind of a

squid, which is probably not much.

So check out the big surf here at home, but be very, very careful

if wet you must get. I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays.