Piha tops list of dangerous beaches

Sunday Star-Times

TURNING TIDE: Phia, patrolled here by Duncan Clarke, has been named New Zealand's most dangerous beach.

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Piha on Auckland's wild west coast has been judged the country's most dangerous beach, based on the number of rescues carried out by lifeguards there.

Since 2000 there have been 1416 rescues performed at the beach, which is famed for its pounding surf, treacherous rips – and in recent years for its starring role in the reality TV show Piha Rescue.

Piha was closely followed by its west coast neighbour Muriwai (1219 rescues). The Auckland pair were well ahead of the next two on the danger list – Mt Maunganui (830) and Whangamata (759).

The figures were released to the Sunday Star-Times by Surf Life Saving New Zealand, to highlight water safety as Kiwis get ready for another summer at the beach.

During a typical summer, the biggest rips are on the country's west coast (including in the South Island, although few brave those beaches).

But Pacific cyclone patterns can create deadly rips and currents in unexpected waters. Last summer, seven beaches not in the top 10 had a large number of rescues: Pauanui (36), Whangarei Heads (30), Sumner (25), Waimarama and Ocean Beach (17), Nelson (16), St Clair and St Kilda (14) and Otago's Brighton (13).

Surf Life Saving NZ chief executive Geoff Barry says the level of danger is determined by the amount of wind and surf a beach has. So a harbour which is flat and calm, with no tidal movement, is relatively safe. The safest patrolled beach in the country is Omaha, north of Auckland, based on it having the least number of rescues.

If you get swept out in a rip, Barry says, the best thing to do is go with the flow. It's counter-intuitive, but don't fight it. You'll panic, get fatigued, and swallow water, and then you're in serious trouble. You're unlikely to be taken hundreds of metres offshore; it may only be 30-50 metres.

Most rips are 10-15 metres wide, so if you can move to the side of the rip you can get out of it and come back in on the waves.

Finding a person in the surf isn't as easy as many people think, he says.

"Once you're in the tide, the water moves so much, and they don't tend to go where you want them to go. You have someone up on the sand dunes pointing and gesturing and going, 'Go north, go south', or whatever. It's not quite as bad as a needle in a haystack, but it's a challenge."

Those who need rescuing are most often white males aged 15-30, because this is the group most likely to head into the surf. But rescued rock anglers are most likely to be Polynesian or Asian.

Barry says the development boom around the country's coastlines is stretching lifeguard services. The increasing population on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, north of Auckland, has put strain on lifeguards from the large Red Beach and Orewa clubs, who are increasingly required to travel to patrol smaller beaches, away from the resources - and social life - of the established clubhouses.

New Zealand has 4000 lifeguards, mostly volunteers. Before they get a beach patrol they have to get their Surf Lifeguard Award – meaning completing a 400m pool swim in nine minutes, passing NZQA workplace first aid and learning about surf and rips.

The organisation's own research shows lifeguards don't join to save lives - they do it for social benefits. But increasingly they are expected to patrol further away from clubs.

Barry says that is a problem: "If we asked you to go 20 or 30 kilometers up the road on a Saturday to patrol, and you have no shelter, no hot water or whatever, and there's two or three of you sitting on your camp stretchers, the novelty wears off pretty quickly."