Surfing

Is surfing safe?

For most surfers, yes. The best data comes from Australia, where Jasmin Lawes and colleagues at Surf Life Saving Australia matched coroners' records with national survey data on time spent surfing. They found 0.06 deaths per million hours surfed in 2004–2020. At the average session length of just under two hours, that is about 0.1 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per session, less than a day on the ski slopes.

The catch is that surfing hurts people often. Board strikes, reef cuts and shoulder injuries are a normal part of the sport, and the death risk is far from even. It sits mostly with older men.

Who dies surfing

Of the 155 surfers and bodyboarders who died in Australia over those 16 years, 96% were men and 37% were 55 or older. The hourly death rate for surfers aged 55 and over was 0.17 per million hours, about eight times the 0.02 for surfers aged 14 to 34, even though the younger group surfed more.

The causes:

Cause listed	Deaths
Drowning	90
Cardiac conditions	65
Head, neck or spinal injury	24
Shark attack or lightning	13

The total is more than 155 because many deaths had more than one cause. Drowning and a heart problem together was the most common pair. More than four in five of the cardiac deaths were men over 45. Paddling against a strong current in cold water is hard work, and for someone with undiagnosed heart disease the sea is a bad place for the first symptom.

Surfers had half the hourly death rate of other people in the water at the coast (0.11 per million hours). The authors point to the leash: a surfer tied to a board has a float at all times. Surfer deaths were also less likely than other coastal deaths to involve a rip current.

Injuries are the real cost

Injuries are where surfing stops looking safe. A survey of 1,348 Australian surfers by Bond University's Water Based Research Unit found 1.79 major acute injuries per 1,000 hours. Shoulders, ankles and the head and face were hurt most. Surfers who could do aerial manoeuvres were hurt most, at about one major injury every two years.

A 2020 review of 19 studies found injury rates from 0.74 to 6.6 per 1,000 hours, the high end in professional contest surfers. Cuts and skin injuries made up 46% of injuries. The most common cause, at 39%, was being hit by your own board. In hospital data, head, face and neck injuries made up 43%, and serious neck and spinal injuries come mainly from being driven into a shallow sandbar or reef.

Big waves are a different sport

The figures above describe ordinary recreational surfing. Big-wave surfing, at places like Nazaré, Jaws or Mavericks, involves hold-downs of many seconds, multiple waves on the head and impacts that can knock a surfer unconscious. Deaths there are rare in absolute terms, but so are the surfers, and there is no reliable rate per session. Professional big-wave teams now use inflatable vests, jet-ski safety crews and rescue training, which is a good sign of how different that risk is.

How to surf more safely

1. Wear a leash suited to your board and the conditions, and check it for wear. It keeps your float with you.
2. Surf within your level. Pick breaks and wave sizes you can handle, and watch a session from the beach before paddling out somewhere new.
3. Learn to spot rips. They show as darker, calmer gaps between breaking waves. Surfers often use them to paddle out, but a tired swimmer separated from a board should float and swim parallel to the shore, not against the current.
4. Protect your head at shallow reef breaks and when learning. Cover your head with your arms when you fall and when you surface.
5. Do not surf alone, especially at remote breaks, and tell someone where you are going.
6. Over 45 with heart risk factors? Talk to your doctor before taking up surfing or returning to it, and do not push through chest pain or unusual breathlessness on the paddle out.
7. Beginners: start on a soft-top board at a beach with lifeguards, away from the main surf line-up.

How we scored it

Fatality risk (88) sits in the 0.1 to 1 micromortMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary band. Injury risk (70) is the weak point, with common board and reef injuries. Controllability (75) is good because wave choice and a leash matter most, and the rescue environment (62) is fair. Compare open-water swimming, which has no board to hold on to, and skiing, with a similar trade-off of rare deaths and frequent injuries.