Safety, accident prevention key as boating season heats up

**The weather in Northeast Florida is heating up and area boaters are hitting the water like they do every year**.

But safety is a big concern at the beginning of boating season — which unofficially started on Memorial Day — and there are several ways to prepare for a summer on the water.

“A lot of folks are just pulling their boats out for the first time this year, so the best thing to do is make sure that it’s completely water-worthy before you get out there,” said Karen Parker, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

She explained that Fish and Wildlife officers are working to educate boaters early in the season.

They do that by loaning life jackets to boaters who aren’t properly equipped and offering advice to inexperienced boaters, but later in the summer those same officers will be handing out citations.

“Later on in the season, they aren’t going to be as accommodating,” Parker said.

She warned that every boater needs to have a life jacket that fits and anyone younger than 7 years old needs to wear a life jacket at all times.

The number of registered boaters in Duval County has dropped from 31,025 in 2010 to 27,203 in 2014, according to the commission. But the number of reported accidents has not dropped over that time.

There were 15 reported accidents last year, compared to 14 in 2010.

The highest number of reported accidents in Duval over that span was 19, which happened in 2013 and 2011. The 19 accidents in 2013 was ranked 10th in the state, and that was the only time Duval has made the top 10 over those years.

Miami-Dade County led all counties in Florida with 79 accidents in 2014, when 634 were reported statewide. There were 736 accidents reported in Florida in 2013.

The top four accident causes in 2014 were operator inexperience, not having a proper lookout, operator inattention and excessive speed, according to Fish and Wildlife.

“Accidents happen, and we want to prevent anybody from being hurt,” Parker said.

She said officers usually approach boaters at random, but some who speed through manatee zones or display any type of reckless behavior are more likely to be pulled over.

Getting pulled over and passing an inspection is not a free pass for the rest of the year, Parker said. Boat inspections can happen any time, and boaters need to be ready for them whenever they are on the water.

From 2013 to 2014, boating deaths increased from 560 to 610 nationwide, a rise of 8.9 percent.

There were 73 reported fatalities in Florida in 2014, which is up from 62 in 2013, according to Fish and Wildlife.

Injuries increased nationwide from 2,620 in 2013 to 2,678 in 2014, a 2.2 percent increase and the total number of accidents increased from 4,062 to 4,064, according to the Coast Guard’s 2014 Recreational Boating Statistics.

Despite those elevated numbers, the span from 2012 to 2014 set a record low for accidents, deaths and injuries.

In Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties, only Clay and Duval saw a drop in boating accidents from 2013 to 2014. That doesn’t tell the whole story because Clay and Duval saw spikes in boater accidents in 2013.

Clay went from six accidents in 2012 to nine in 2013 and Duval went from 13 in 2012 to 19 in 2013.

There were two boating fatalities in Duval and one in Clay last year and none in St. Johns and Nassau counties, according to Fish and Wildlife.

Parker suggested boaters should always tell someone who is staying on shore where they plan to go and when they plan to return. But she said the most important thing a boater can remember is to wear a life jacket.

Even the strongest swimmers need to wear life jackets, Parker said, because someone’s ability to swim doesn’t matter if they are knocked unconscious.
“
I have written way too many news releases about people who weren’t wearing their life jacket and never made it back home, and I don’t want to write any more of those,” Parker said.