Beach drowning among people from multicultural communities continues to be a major concern in Australia. Unfortunately, few studies have attempted to quantify how different multicultural communities interact with the beach, what their swimming ability is like and what they understand about common beach safety practices and hazards.

We reviewed 146 coastal drowning studies from around the world in an attempt to characterise the peer-reviewed scientific literature in the field. This study aimed to identify the key concepts, findings, evidence and gaps in the science in order to help guide future research and inform prevention activities.

The study revealed that of those bodies found, most missing people (65%) were recovered within 24 hours of searches commencing and 64% were located within 1km of where they disappeared.

Surf Zone Injuries occurred more on warm sunny days with low wind due to increased beachgoer numbers and hazard exposure and were mostly associated with waves approaching the coastline straight on.

An important new study led by Jaz Lawes of Surf Life Saving Australia was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE which documents and characterises bystander rescuer fatalities within Australian coastal waterways between July 2004 and June 2019.

Lifeguard data has been used in drowning research since the 1980s, and a few challenges have previously been identified. However, what and how that information is recorded hasn’t been formally examined until now.

Dr. Andrew Schmidt from Lifeguards Without Borders presented preliminary results from the International Lifeguard Data Collection Survey at the World Conference on Drowning Prevention in Durban, South Africa - thanks Andrew!

Back in 2017 at the World Conference on Drowning Prevention in Vancouver, a group of us lifeguard-researcher-nerd types were talking at the International Drowning Researcher’s Alliance (IDRA) meeting.

An important component of our NSW Government Water Safety Fund project ‘Identifying Rip Currents and Beach Usage at Unpatrolled Beach Locations’ was to conduct face to face surveys of beachgoers visiting the unpatrolled beaches monitored by the remote trail cameras.

Back in 2019, Rob Brander and Dr Mitch Harley from the UNSW Sydney Water Research Laboratory (WRL) received funding from the NSW Government Department of Justice Water Safety Fund (alas, this funding scheme is now defunct) for the project ‘Identifying Rip Currents and Beach Usage at Unpatrolled Beach Locations’.

There’s been a bit of a lull in rip current research lately, but an exciting new study led by Sebastian Pitman of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand was recently published in the Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.