Surf Condition Flags

When we checked it at the St. Andrews State Park, we were told to stay out of the water due to lots of jelly fish stinging people. There were purple flags (which mean dangerous marine life like jelly fish) and yellow flags (which means high surf and riptides) up. The second day I decided to walk the beach and saw no jelly fish at all (it is not at all strange to see several dead ones on the beach or live ones in the water). Some people mentioned seeing small jelly fish out at a jetty while fishing while others said they were swimming and had no problem at all. So, I stopped a ranger to ask how dangerous it really was. The ranger was completely surprised we had been told to stay out of the water. When asked about the flags, he told me a long story about how no local rangers actually looked at the water conditions. The yellow flag was up because someone 8 miles away thought the water looked a big rough (but had no idea if there were riptides in this area). The purple flag was up here because someone complained about seeing a jelly fish several days ago (jelly fish are always in the ocean). Interestingly, just down the beach there were no purple flags flying. Basically we were told the flags really meant nothing at all except that some lawyers felt they had to always err on the side of caution to prevent being sued. So, instead they warn us to stay out of the water when we could have been relaxing in the waves!

This is NOT a picture of a jellyfish (since we didn't see any).

We’re still recuperating from our bad luck day. Other than the flags, state parks are a nice way to relax. The deer at St. Andrews State Park are very friendly. I walked fairly close to several deer that didn’t appear skittish at all.