The safety information every Cocoa Beach visitor needs. Rip currents, jellyfish, stingrays, sharks and how lifeguards think.
The Atlantic at Cocoa Beach is beautiful and mostly safe. But rip currents send tourists to the hospital every season. This is the guide that prevents that.
A rip current is a narrow, fast-moving channel of water flowing away from shore. They form where water pushed in by waves finds a path back out — often through a break in a sandbar. From shore, a rip current sometimes looks like darker, choppier water or a gap in the wave break. Lifeguards flag them with red flags. If you get caught in one: do not swim directly to shore against the current. You will exhaust yourself. Swim parallel to shore until you are out of the narrow current, then swim in.
Portuguese man-o-wars occasionally wash up on Cocoa Beach in spring when onshore winds push them from offshore. They look like deflated blue plastic bags with long purple tentacles. Do not touch them even if they appear dead — the cells retain potency for hours. Moon jellyfish are common and mostly harmless. Stingrays rest on the sandy bottom in shallow water — shuffle your feet when walking in, not swimming depths of water.
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