Time and again, drowning deaths and injuries have occurred during open-water swimming activities in the sea. Another such tragedy happened on June 15, when a morning swimming club member drowned during a mass swim across Penghu Bay (澎湖灣) in Penghu County. Such regrettable events should prompt people to consider whether the sea has to be such a high-risk environment.
Taiwan’s coastline is more than 1,500km long and has many scenic stretches, including sandy beaches that attract large numbers of tourists to take part in seaside leisure activities. Popular marine activities include those that require equipment, such as surfing, canoeing, sailing, sailboarding, jet skiing and standup paddleboarding, and others that need little or no equipment, such as swimming and diving. Activities like these can be seen all around Taiwan every summer. While they can be great fun, from time to time people also see regrettable news about accidents.
Any kind of activity entails risks, and seaside activities are certainly no exception. The risk factors associated with seaside activities include natural factors, such as wind, waves, tides, currents, topology, gradient and living organisms, and human factors, such as a person’s physical condition, and the rules and regulations governing activities and events.
The swimming accident on June 15 led to the death of one swimmer.
This was preceded by a spate of accidents toward the end of May. More than 1,000 people took part in a long-distance swim at Turtle Island (龜山島) in Yilan County, but a sudden change in sea conditions resulted in several people nearly drowning and becoming unconscious, upon which the activity was called off.
At about the same time, during a long-distance swimming event along the Waimushan (外木山) coast in Keelung, 15 swimmers’ strength gave out and they had to be rescued and taken ashore. Another incident took place in waters near Elephant Trunk Rock (象鼻岩) in the Shenao (深澳) area of New Taipei City’s Rueifang District (瑞芳), where a dozen standup paddleboarders could not paddle back to the shore and had to be rescued by the coast guard.
The most serious accident of all must be the long-distance swimming event that took place in South Bay (南灣) at Kenting in Pingtung County in April 2013, where several hundred of the more than 2,000 swimmers could not swim back to shore, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries.
Considering that accidents like these keep happening, the relevant government agencies should respond by imposing tighter regulations.
Large-scale marine activities often attract hundreds or even more than 1,000 participants. The organizers of such large-scale events are sure to deploy comprehensive safety and lifesaving measures, but accidents still happen.
One reason for this is an insufficient grasp of sea conditions. Even onshore weather can be unpredictable. The weather can be bright and clear at one moment and then suddenly change for the worse. Offshore weather is even more complicated.
The sea surface forms the border between the atmosphere and seawater, making it especially prone to unpredictable changes.
The main risk factors affecting sea-surface activities are wind, waves, tides and currents. Of these, changing tidal levels are the most regular and predictable. Waves are visible to the naked eye, and with modern technology it is possible to forecast waves with some degree of accuracy. As for sea breezes, they also have some regular patterns.
In contrast, sea currents are one of the most dangerous factors. The strength of currents cannot be detected by eyesight. Currents are affected by tides, wind, topography and waves, making them very hard to forecast. When marine activity participants get into trouble because of currents, it often happens to a large group of people at the same time. For those doing barehanded activities, such as swimming or diving, or using non-mechanized equipment, such as canoes and paddleboards, it is difficult or impossible to resist the powerful natural force of sea currents.
A number of government agencies, such as the Central Weather Bureau and the Tourism Bureau, have set up marine observatories in Taiwan’s maritime territory to forecast waves, tides and currents. The information generated by these observatories is available online, so hopefully marine activity organizers will refer to this data when judging the safety of their events.
However, the roles of central government authorities are defined in such a way that they emphasize monitoring and warnings that apply to relatively wide areas and for relatively long periods of time.
If this kind of information is assumed to represent changes in sea conditions in a smaller area, it is sometimes going to give a distorted impression.
To deal with this problem, some nations have developed a new kind of sea-related business, namely sea condition information services, which provide marine engineering projects, marine activity organizers and individuals with sea condition monitoring and forecast services for small areas. They also collaborate with insurance providers to reduce the damages that activity organizers risk incurring because of sea hazards.
Some private businesses in Taiwan have for years been providing onshore weather information services, so they might decide to expand into the business of providing safety information for marine activities.
While seaside activities can be great fun, the risks involved must also be borne in mind. Individuals must pay attention to their own physical condition before deciding whether to take part in an activity, and they should also keep an eye on marine weather information.
As for event organizers, they need to get hold of more precise and timely information about marine phenomena so as to reduce the chance of accidents happening.
Perhaps government departments could introduce regulations that require them to do so. Hopefully, such measures could reduce the death toll and injuries resulting from marine leisure activities. If so, people might come to love the sea more than they already do.
Doong Dong-jiing is an associate professor in National Cheng Kung University’s hydraulic and ocean engineering department.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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