Water Safety experts gather for Sydney Summit

As part of ongoing moves to address rising drowning rates, leading water safety experts and advocates are gathering today at the National Water Safety Summit at ICC Sydney.

Following a summer drowning toll where drowning rates rose 30% on the previous summer, delegates are looking at ways to work with at-risk groups within community, including young children, people from multicultural backgrounds and people in rural and regional areas of Australia.

The National Water Safety Summit is looking to refocus discussions following the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and to look at ways to strengthen the Australian Water Safety Strategy 2030.

The event, which is co-hosted by Royal Life Saving Society - Australia and Surf Life Saving Australia, will bring 200 experts from across the nation.

Presenters include researchers, water safety experts, state and local governments and educators.

The current challenges in water safety were highlighted on World Drowning Prevention Day 2022, staged on Monday 25th July.

Speaking to media on World Drowning Prevention Day, Royal Life Saving Chief Executive, Justin Scarr advised that he expects this year’s national drowning toll to be even worse than in 2020/21 when it rose by 20% to 294 fatal drownings.

Scarr emphasised the importance of swimming lessons before summer to make up for lost time during the pandemic when hundreds of thousands of children aged seven to 10 years were deprived of life-saving skills.

He told the Sydney Morning Herald “this year’s public education will focus on a generation of children who have missed swimming lessons; the hundreds of thousands of children seven, eight, nine and 10 years who missed out on swimming lessons.”

Scarr said extreme weather causing heatwaves and floods combined with the impact of the pandemic contributed to increased deaths from drowning worldwide. This included a 30% spike over the Australian summer when 112 people fatally drowned, including 22 in floodwaters.

World Drowning Prevention Day also saw the launch of a song list on Spotify compiled by Australian water safety experts.

Justin Leavy of Curtin University’s Drowning Prevention Evidence & Evaluation Project (DEEP) said water safety experts had nominated songs that evoked “a memory, a moment, a destination - simply a list of songs that would remind people of the power of water”.

The DEEP song list includes Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel, nominated many times, Beyond the Sea by Robbie Williams, Cry Me a River by Justin Timberlake and Neil Young’s Down by the River.

Speaking at one of the Summit breakouts. Dr Jeff Wilks, Adjunct Professor at Southern Cross University and Managing Director of Marine Tourism Australia, stated that Australia “needs a national clearinghouse for water safety research.”

The National Water Safety Summit is running on 4th and 5th August.

Images: Delegates at the National Water Safety Summit at ICC Sydney this morning.