50K
USERS OVER SUMMER
13.4K COURSES COMPLETED OVER SUMMER
Beach Passport is an SLSA initiative that was launched in November 2024. Over 37,000 people completed the course in year one and in December 2025 new features were added to further enhance the educational outcomes.
New features in 2025 include:
• New rip current identification module
• 5 new languages bringing the total available to 7: English, Simplified Chinese, Hindi, Punjabi, Arabic, Japanese and German
52K COURSES COMPLETED TO DATE
12 MILLION ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN TOTAL REACH
SLSA's 'Stop Look Stay Alive' national water safety campaign had a total reach of 12 million over summer via TV, out of home and online channels. This resulted in a further 13,400 Beach Passport course completions over summer, bringing the total to 52,000 to date.
Beach Passport is available to adults, teens and children at www.beachpassport.org.au
METHODOLOGY & ANALYSIS The Summer Coastal Drowning Report 2025/26 contains information on coastal drowning deaths reported in the media that occurred in Australian waters over summer (1 December 2025 - 28 February 2026). This information is correct as of 11:00 am 1 March 2026. All care is taken to ensure the statistical information included within this report is correct. However, since the primary data source is media and case information has not been validated further, this data may be amended at a later date. For this report, drowning death data was collated from multiple sources, including SurfGuard, the IRD, SurfCom, and by monitoring media reports. The information for these cases is preliminary and is likely to change as they are further verified using coronial reports.
DROWNING DATA LIMITATIONS
The data in this interim summer report are considered preliminary and likely to change as many coronial investigations remain open. Deaths are excluded as a coastal drowning if they are reported as 'intentional deaths', they occur at inland or non-aquatic locations, or drowning/ immersion' is not a contributory factor. In an effort to produce a timely report on our current summer data we acknowledge that these figures, which have been collated from multiple sources, are preliminary and subject to change as case investigations occur during the coronial process. The authors are responsible for the use made of the data in this report.
© 2026 SURF LIFE SAVING AUSTRALIA
This publication is copyright. Except as expressly provided in the Copyright Act 1968 and the Copyright Amendment Act 2006, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval systems or transmitted by any means (including electronic, mechanical, microcopying, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior permission from Surf Life Saving Australia. For enquiries concerning reproduction, contact SLSA on: phone 02 9215 8000; email: info@slsa.asn.au
Every attempt has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright, but in some cases this may not have been possible. Surf Life Saving Australia apologises for any accidental infringements and would welcome any information to redress the situation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Surf Life Saving Australia wishes to thank Royal Life Saving Society Australia: William Koon, Stacey Pidgeon, and Lauren Miller; SLS state research personnel, centres, branches, clubs, support operations and ALS; SLSA major national corporate partners: DHL, Isuzu, Qantas and Westpac.
This report was compiled by Jasmin Lawes, National Research Manager; Norton Grey, Research Assistant; Olivier Pastore, Research Assistant. Design: Dave Homer, Melissa Conchar.
SUGGESTED CITATION
Surf Life Saving Australia (2026). Summer Coastal Drowning Report 2025/26. SLSA: Sydney.