The LIFESAVING CHRONICLES Podcast

New Jersey Ocean Front Lifeguarding

• York Assists • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Welcome to another episode of the LIFESAVING CHRONICLES podcast, brought to you by the National Safety Training Center! In this episode, host Dave Kotz speaks with Jay, the lifeguard manager at Seabright Beach Club, to discuss the unique challenges and experiences of lifeguarding at an oceanfront facility compared to pools and lake communities.

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Thank you.

David Kotz:

Hey, everyone. It's Dave Kotz with the LIFESAVING CHRONICLES and the National Safety Training Center. We're here at the Seabright Beach Club.

Jay:

Correct.

David Kotz:

We're here talking about what makes this place different than lifeguarding at a pool or lifeguarding at like a pond or a lake community. So here with us is Jay. Jay is the lifeguard manager for this facility. Jay, just to start, tell us about yourself and then we'll talk about the facility and what makes this so different.

Jay:

Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me here today. In the off season, I'm a math teacher, a middle school math teacher. I also coach high school baseball. And then I come here and save lives for a living. It's my 19th year here at Seabright Beach Club. 15th year overall as the captain of the lifeguard staff. And we take a lot of pride in just being able to come out here, enjoy the sun and the surf and make a difference every so often for an individual.

David Kotz:

It's a great combination, teacher and then lifeguarding during the summer. That's, I understand that's a fairly common combination.

Jay:

Yes, and we're blessed to have a couple other teachers here, as well. And you also, sometimes you get to work with your students, as well. We have some students that come through and you get to see them outside of the facility, as well. Hopefully, convince them to become educators. But yeah, it's a very common practice to have teachers here on the lifeguard staff.

David Kotz:

I love talking about how when you start as a lifeguard, there's almost a fraternity or sorority aspect to it where you build people up and mold them into future leaders. And it sounds like you're doing that not only in the lifesaving business, but in education as well. And that works very well together. It's cool.

Jay:

It's very cool. And like you said, there's a lot of parallels in the lifeguarding business. Just real life application as well. Especially when they become workforce and go on to bigger and better things. So it's absolutely a big difference maker.

David Kotz:

Terrific. How many staff do you guys typically have on for summer?

Jay:

So we're actually very tiny here. We only have about 15 on our total staff. You go up the ways to Sandy hook and they're pushing almost 80 on staff there, so it all depends on what the facility needs and also just availability of lifeguards that come through and apply.

David Kotz:

That's great. And I understand that there's a development program, too, so you have some kind of junior staff, then some more senior people, and they can work their way up.

Jay:

Yeah, we run a junior guard program here for anyone who's younger, anywhere as young from ages five to seven. We called our beach teach ocean safety course to get them comfortable with the ocean. And then once they reach eight years old, about eight to 12, they join our junior yard program. And then if they're successful there, we'll push them on at 13 to the public beach where hopefully they become nippers and begin to mold them into ocean lifeguards or pool lifeguards.

David Kotz:

Terrific. Now tell us a little bit about your facility. Obviously it's a gorgeous facility. We're looking at a beautiful day here at the Jersey shore. What do you have here that makes this special?

Jay:

We actually operate two pools. We have our big pool that we call it. It's actually 33 meters long, so it's actually a little bit above average in terms of that. We have our baby pool, which is about two feet deep at its max depth. And then we of course have the ocean front here. Which again, makes things a little extra fun, so to speak, especially when you got a hurricane or something like that coming.

David Kotz:

Awesome. So in particular, what makes this special obviously is the ocean, the Atlantic facing beach. Tell me about the challenges that we have over here that doesn't happen in the pool or lake communities.

Jay:

The biggest challenge is how quickly things can change at the flip of the switch. Obviously the very basics, you have your ties, high tide, low tide. You have your sandbars, you have the rip current risk as well. That's always going on. You also have, your surf zone, your swim zone. You have the rules that have to be enforced. There's a lot of different things. Like I said, that, that could change at a moment's notice, but the biggest thing is mother nature and just the fact that the rip currents, the tidal aspect of the water, and again, just being on your toes at all times.

David Kotz:

So I noticed that beach,operations, surf beach operations are a little different than every other lifeguarding that I've experienced in my 40 some odd years of doing this craziness. We're looking out at the beach and you've got flags and the flags indicate where the safe swimming zone is. And then to the outside of that those green flags perimeters, you allow surfing. We don't have surfing in the lake community. We don't have surfing in the pool either. The other interesting thing that I mean, I did this when I was younger and more in shape- You guys have surfboards boats. So you have the dories kayaks and other places we use jet skis in the surf zone. That's a whole different ball of wax then every other lifeguard and I mentioned that kind of because it forces you to have a different level of fitness. In a pool, I may have to swim 10, 15 yards maximum to affect the save. At the beach, how far potentially could you be swimming?

Jay:

Oh, you're talking, you get caught in a rip, you could go 100 plus yards out easy like that on that sandbar breaks and you're gone. So like you said, we do run a physical test beginning of the year. It's a time swim. They have to get under a certain amount of time to become each eligible to 500 that we time them on. We'll also run them through a time mile run. They tread water, they do brick rescues as well, and then we facilitate with the public beach as well to practice once a week with them on drills, skills, and everything else. But as you said here, the biggest thing that we want to really emphasize is just the non verbal communication. Through the flag system, we run a four flag system that's universal throughout the town of Seabright. So if you come to the beach, you understand green flag is safe, yellow is moderate, red is a high risk, and double red means no swimming at all. But as you go to each facility, the rules depending on that specific area depends on the facility you're at, so that is a challenge we face.

David Kotz:

The other thing I noticed in your stand that we're looking at over my left shoulder is staffed by two guards. Is that typical for the Atlantic facing beaches here in Jersey?

Jay:

Again, depending on staffing, they'll go as small as one guard, upwards of three or four. We're currently two at the start of the morning, and then at twelve, once we get our late guards in we'll push it up to three or four depending on how busy we are, what the conditions call for. I would say, I would suggest bare minimum that you have two on stand.

David Kotz:

That's great. My guess is that they're busy. How many rescues are you making either daily or weekly?

Jay:

Again, the conditions dictate a lot of it. We'll go anywhere from just your simple one or two a day. But if, Mother Nature is turning up, you're looking at five plus easily. And this is a facility where it's a private club, so a lot of the members already know how to swim. You go to the public beach and you're pushing almost 20 to 30 on those rough days.

David Kotz:

Wow. And so this is a private club and it's a fairly defined section of beach. I noticed to the right and to the left of us, there are other clubs. How well do you get along with your neighbors? Are you cross training with them and do you back each other up for rescues?

Jay:

So we do try to collaborate at least once a week with the public beach to get joint training. So we're all on the same page again with those nonverbal cues. The same terminology, so we understand what's going on. We do cross scan with each other, so if we know something next door, that we need to go ahead and assist them as well. Same thing over here the biggest thing is, we try to use is the whistles. If you hear three whistles, the key is three whistles, that means something major is going on, whether it's a rescue, whether it is weather related, thunder, lightning the three whistles is what you want to listen for.

David Kotz:

That's great, and actually that's what we train on all the time in the pool environment as well. So there, look, there's some commonality to Three Whistles. I love it. What else makes this place, the ocean part? Why is this different than a beach at a lake? What happens here?

Jay:

I would say that the biggest thing with the ocean is that people think they come here thinking that they can just walk right into it and they'll just be fine. And there's a lot of hidden dangers. Like I said, like you don't realize there's a sandbar until you walk up on it. You might not realize that there's a ledge as soon as you come in. You might not notice that there's a rip current or an undertow that day. You might not even realize you're in it until it's too late. I think that's the biggest thing is a lot of people come in here with a false sense of security. They take it for granted and then by the time they realize they're in trouble it's too late at that point.

David Kotz:

For the public, this is different. Water is not water. The ocean is an amazing force. And water is very powerful. The tides, they go up and down. Average tide here is 8 10 foot, maybe?

Jay:

About, yes.

David Kotz:

There's an 8 10 foot variance twice a day. When the water's coming in and out, the waves could be local from wind, or they could be offshore. You get rollers coming in from an offshore event. So it's very dynamic, and as Jay said, it can change on a flick of a switch.. So the lifeguards have to be on their toes and prepared. Alright, what's the strangest thing that ever happened here?

Jay:

One day we're sitting on the guard stand. We're looking north towards where our jetty is and on the other side we just, we see flames. We just see flames up in the air. Well, what's going on over there? So we hop in our gator and we drive on down. Somebody decided to just make a little bit of a fire pit in the ground and grill some hot dogs and hamburgers.

David Kotz:

Is that allowed?

Jay:

No.

David Kotz:

No. All right.

Jay:

No. I said, you're sitting here, you just see these, this, like I said, sky high flame on the other side of the rocks and you're like, what could possibly be going on? You don't expect to see fire as a lifeguard. Water's your friend. You're not expecting to actually see fire. So that was definitely one that uh, is in the memory book.

David Kotz:

Anything else you want to tell us about staffing this type of facility versus another facility?

Jay:

So here they- all guards are required to be American Red Cross certified in Lifeguarding; deepwater lifeguarding. So they have to come in with that cert. And then once they're here, and we get them through our preliminary checks on the physical side, if they qualify for the ocean, we'll dual certify them to on site with the public coordination with the public beach to also sit and work on the ocean.

David Kotz:

So that's through USLA?

Jay:

Correct, USLA.

David Kotz:

Got it. All right, so they get both American Red Cross certification and USLA, which if I understand correctly is valid at this facility only. So if they go to another facility, they have to get that USLA certification.

Jay:

Correct. So if you do decide to switch beaches, you have to go through the training process all over again.

David Kotz:

So obviously with the Red Cross, it's very standardized and it should be valid anywhere. Why is it different with USLA? Why is this beach different than the beach 10 miles down the road?

Jay:

And that's a question we've been asking, like, why can't we come across this universal training program? And honestly, every beach is different. What we have going here in Seabright, a lot of times we'll get shore break here. We're going to a tournament tomorrow down south. The waves are breaking out much farther. And if you head all the way down to the bottom around Cape Mayonette, the surf can go out much farther than that. So I think that what the USLA says is that they want you to train to what you have on site and make it specific to you.

David Kotz:

Each beach is truly different and you need to be focused on what you have. It's almost like a site specific course.

Jay:

Correct. There's a basic checklist you have to hit on. But they want you to go more in depth on what you need specific to your site.

David Kotz:

Got it. What again, specific to your facility, what is your most used piece of rescue equipment?

Jay:

I would say it's our Peterson tube and our fins. That's it. That's what we tend to emphasize here. The Peterson tube, it's similar to the rescue can or the torque. Only difference is it's actually more similar to what you have on the pool with the pool float, but this one has a clip on it. So once you have the individual, strap it around their upper chest, so you can actually clip them in. So if you do happen to disengage coming in on the surf or whatnot, at least they'll pop up and be able to float. We do like the lifeguards practice with the torpedo or the rescue can because other facilities don't have the Peterson. But we do emphasize the use of fins here, especially on a big surf.

David Kotz:

That's great. Is there a piece of equipment that you don't have that you wish you did?

Jay:

If you ask my staff, they want a Jet Ski in the worst way. They see some of the other series having a Jet Ski, and I think they want it more for play and show than the actual rescue aspect. But I think Jet Ski would definitely be the one that they would ask for. We do have a boat. It's a 45 year old Hankin, so it's a classic. We do have the boat. We have our rescue boards, which they like as well. Need for Speed, Jet Ski would be the route they take.

David Kotz:

Very cool. Now I know there's some lifeguard competitions up and down the Jersey Shore too. Do you guys participate in those?

Jay:

Yep, so we've got one tomorrow and again on Monday.

David Kotz:

Outstanding. How do you normally stack up?

Jay:

So we're the little engine that could, you know like I said, being only 15 staff and having to leave a few behind cause the pool stays open past the beach hours. We go in there and we just put our best foot forward. It was actually fun. We paired up with the public beach to do a tag team tournament last week, but tomorrow it's all on us. So we'll see how we do.

David Kotz:

That's great. Jay, listen, Hey, it's been a pleasure talking to you. I really appreciate it.

Jay:

Thank you.

David Kotz:

Thank you so much.

Jay:

Always a pleasure.

David Kotz:

Thanks again, guys!

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