Drowning is Kauai’s No. 1 cause of unintentional death, said Dr. Chuck Blay, a Kauai-based Earth and ocean scientist. The public is invited to hear Blay speak on “Death by Drowning in the Nearshore Marine Waters of Kauai: An Overview
Drowning is Kauai’s No. 1 cause of unintentional death, said Dr. Chuck Blay, a Kauai-based Earth and ocean scientist.
The public is invited to hear Blay speak on “Death by Drowning in the Nearshore Marine Waters of Kauai: An Overview and Possible Solutions.”
The event is from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Hanapepe Public Library.
During the free presentation, Blay will offer an overview of Kauai’s drowning deaths from 1970 to 2013.
“The island of Kauai occupies merely the very tip of a giant volcanic mountain sitting in the middle of the planet’s largest ocean,” Blay said in a release. “Hazardous conditions abound for us air-breathing land mammals.”
Blay said that since 1970, 332 people have died from drowning in the island’s nearshore marine waters, most merely swimming or snorkeling. The deaths have occurred at more than 40 locations around the island’s 110-mile perimeter.
More than three-fourths have been visitors, with the average age being 46, according to Blay. And 85 percent of drowning victims have been male.
The death rate has steadily increased from an average of 5.5 per year during the 1970s, to more than 10 per year since 2000.
The number of visitors increased from 640,000 per year to slightly more than a million over the same time period. Paradoxically, the number of lifeguards and associated water safety personnel increased at a much greater rate, from a handful at two 1970 guard stations to near 50 water safety personnel at 10 stations by 2010.
Water safety is a complicated situation for Kauai, he said.
“The county provides world-class lifeguards, well-equipped at 10 coastal localities,” Blay said. “Unfortunately, they are too few to be able to monitor the many more localities at which island visitors and residents alike like to enter the ocean.”
Blay said the state of Hawaii is little help, emphasizing liability protection with an abundance of generic, relatively uninformative warning signs.
“The tourist industry promotes visitation but provides little direct information as to the hazardous nature of the alluring coastline,” he said.
Recognizing that attaining zero annual deaths by drowning for Kauai is an unrealistic goal owing to the many aspects of Kauai’s unique situation, Blay will propose a shift in water safety and drowning prevention.
His thesis emphasizes the need for increased site-specific and hazard-specific signage at the island’s many guarded and unguarded hazardous locations.
