Beach Safety Awareness Campaign
Planning a trip to the beach? Schedule a Beach Safety Presentation!
Be Safe, Have Fun!
What you can expect from our Beach Safety Presentations:
During the Beach Safety presentation, you will learn about the daily hazards you are likely to encounter at the beach including rip currents, jellyfish, and high surf.
No matter the size or demographic of your group, you are sure to learn something new about the beaches of the Emerald Coast. The Beach Safety team will educate you on how to stay safe at the beach so that everyone can have fun!
Beach Safety with Buddy
The Beach Safety with Buddy presentation is an interactive presentation formatted for groups consisting of primarily grade school children.
The presentation runs about 30 minutes long and covers a variety of topics from, how to escape from a rip current, to the different types of marine animals that live in the gulf. Kids will get to meet our mascot, Buddy the Bottle nose dolphin and learn his
Top 10 Beach Safety tips.
Please contact Megan Vermaas for more information or to schedule a presentation:
cell: 850-259-3999
email: mvermaas@co.okaloosa.fl.us
Statistics and Goals of the
Beach Safety Awareness campaign
-
The United States Lifesaving Association estimates that the annual number of deaths due to rip currents on our nation's beaches exceeds 100. Rip currents account for over 80% of rescues performed by surf beach lifeguards.
Our Goal is to educate the community on how to spot rip currents, how to identify a rip current once you are caught in one, and how to escape a rip current. “Break the Grip of the Rip!” Rip current awareness week is June 5-11.
- USLA has calculated the chance that a person will drown while attending a beach protected by USLA affiliated lifeguards at 1 in 18 million (.0000055%).*
Our Goal is to stress the importance of utilizing parks and beaches that are supervised by a lifeguard. We teach kids to never swim alone and always swim with a buddy.
- You hear a lot in the news about shark attacks, but you're much more likely to encounter a stinging jellyfish or get “barbed” by a catfish at the beach than encounter a man-eating shark. The United States averages just 16 shark attacks each year and slightly less than one shark-attack fatality every two years.* Jellyfish stings are one of the most common injury suffered at the beach.
Our Goal is to educate the community about different marine life that they may encounter at the beach and advise them on how to treat injuries they are likely to sustain whether it be a Jellyfish sting or catfish barb.
- Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. More than 3.5 million skin cancers in over two million people are diagnosed annually. One in five Americans will develop skin cancer in the course of a lifetime.
Our Goal is to educate the community on the importance of wearing sunscreen and protecting their skin from the harsh elements that they may be exposed to out on the beach.
- Every year drowning victims include untrained “rescuers” who enter the water in attempts to affect rescues on other swimmers in distress.
Our Goal is to educate the community on how to self rescue as well as how to activate the emergency response sytem to get help coming as soon as possible.
*This is based on the last ten years of reports from USLA affiliated lifeguard agencies, comparing estimated beach attendance to the number of drowning in areas under lifeguard protection.
*National Geographic News
*American Cancer Society
Meet Buddy
the Dolphin!
Buddy, the Bottle nose dolphin, is the newest member of the Beach Safety team and the mascot of the Beach Safety Awareness campaign. Buddy attends our Beach Safety presentations to share his top 10 safety tips and remind kids to swim in a guarded area and always swim with a buddy!
Lifeguard Lucy
Lucy is our resident mascot dog. She is a sweet and lovable golden retriever. When she isn't hanging out around the office she is assisting us in our Beach Safety Presentations. Lucy is equipped with her own SAR vest to help her in making flat water rescues.
