Provisional drowning numbers show positive trend

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Nineteen people have drowned so far this year – a significant reduction on the 30 drownings recorded at the same time last year. Nine people drowned in January, a record low for what is typically the worst month of the year - and the lowest January figure since records began in 1980.

“It’s a pleasing trend and if we can maintain our increased initiatives in the aquatic sector we believe we can avoid a return to the numbers we saw 30 years ago,” says Grant Florence, Chief Executive, Surf Life Saving New Zealand (SLSNZ).

“In the last ten years we’ve increased our beach patrol hours by nearly 35% and we’re now patrolling at more beaches than ever before. Combined with our education and coastal audit programme, we’re making good inroads on the numbers being rescued and that flows to a positive trend in the drowning rate.” said Florence.

SLSNZ’s rescue statistics show those most at risk are aged less than 14 years – accounting for nearly 40% of rescues on beaches and estuaries each year.

“Our school education programmes have more than 60,000 children attend each year so we’re working hard to up skill this age group. While children feature high in Surf Lifeguard’s activities the pleasing result is just 5% of those drowning each year are aged 5 to 14 years,” said Florence.

New Zealand’s coastline continues to increase in popularity as coastal development increases accessibility, and health and wellbeing has a greater top of mind focus - however there are a lot of positive trends in statistics gathered in the aquatic sector.

“We’d obviously like to see zero drownings in our waters, but this is not realistic. The average annual drowning toll in the 1980’s was 181 – we aim to see a dramatic decrease from these numbers. If we can work towards lowering this number to under 90 per year - then we’d be looking at a 50 per cent reduction from the 1980’s – showing we are heading in the right direction to see this downward trend continue.” said Florence.

Surf Life Saving will celebrate 100 years of beach patrols during Centenary celebrations next summer.

ENDS

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