Beyond the Towers: How Maui Is Rethinking Ocean Safety

Interview with Zack Edlao, Maui Ocean Safety

Maui has 120 miles of coastline, but only 12 lifeguard towers serving nine beaches. So what happens when people head into the ocean beyond a lifeguard's reach?

In this Deep Dive conversation, Maui Ocean Safety Chief Zack Edlao takes us behind the scenes of that challenge. He shares what it takes to protect residents and visitors in an environment that can change in seconds, from unguarded beaches and powerful rip currents to changing ocean conditions, limited coverage, and the need to reach people with safety information before they ever enter the water.

Edlao talks about the role of education, community relationships, rescue watercraft, youth programs, and interagency training in preventing emergencies before they happen. The conversation also explores the proposed Black Rock lifeguard tower and the broader effort to strengthen ocean safety through collaboration among Hawaii’s county ocean-safety teams, fire, police, EMS, emergency management, the Coast Guard, DLNR, community organizations and local residents.

The conversation also looks beyond Maui. Edlao discusses his upcoming visit to Okinawa to work with Taishi Otono, continuing the exchange of ideas and experience that can help strengthen ocean safety through learning across communities and regions.

At its heart, this is a conversation about kuleana, the shared responsibility to understand the ocean, look out for one another, and help create safer shorelines across Hawaii. Ocean safety doesn't begin when the rescue starts. It begins before anyone gets in the water.

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Beyond Swim Lessons: Building Lifelong Water Safety

What does it really mean for a child to be safe around water?

Chris Harkness, President of SafeSplash Swim School, talks about why learning to swim is only part of the answer. He explains the Safer Swimmer Promise, the self-rescue skills children should develop, and why becoming a capable swimmer takes time, repetition, and consistent practice. For many children, that process can take eight to twelve months rather than a few weeks of lessons.

The conversation looks at how we define water competency and whether children are learning skills they can actually use if they unexpectedly find themselves in trouble. Harkness discusses the importance of teaching children how to respond independently in the water while recognizing that no level of swimming ability makes a child drown-proof.

Swim lessons are also only one layer of protection. Active adult supervision, barriers around pools, CPR, emergency planning, and knowing how to respond when something goes wrong all play a role in preventing drowning and improving outcomes.

A key part of the discussion focuses on what happens when swimmers leave the pool. Oceans, lakes, and rivers introduce waves, currents, changing depths, cold water, and other conditions that cannot be fully recreated in a controlled swimming environment. Harkness discusses this gap and the possibility of bringing more open-water preparation into SafeSplash programming.

The interview also explores access. Scholarships, community partnerships, and other approaches can help make swimming instruction available to more families. But learning the skills is only the beginning. How well do children retain those skills months or years later, and how often do they need to practice to remain competent?

The bigger question is not simply whether a child can swim. It is how we build a system that gives children the skills, judgment, experience, and layers of protection they need to be safer around water throughout their lives.

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Beyond the Plan: Turning Water Safety Into Action

Drowning prevention does not begin with a swimming pool. It begins with knowledge, local leadership, and the willingness to use the resources a community already has.

Nathalie Martin discusses how her work in aquatics, research, humanitarian settings, and drowning prevention led to the creation of the Swim Global Project, a network designed to connect people across a water safety field that can often be fragmented. By bringing together swim school owners, researchers, public health professionals, operators, and other practitioners, Swim Global helps share knowledge, strengthen collaboration, and identify practical approaches to prevention.

Drawing on work in Bimini and Venezuela, Martin explains why effective water safety efforts must be built with communities rather than simply brought into them. In Bimini and other Caribbean communities, fear of the water, generational trauma, and long standing misinformation can influence swimming ability and attitudes toward the ocean. Sustainable change depends on community trust, local leadership, and building the capacity of people who will remain after outside experts leave.

Martin also emphasizes that water safety education does not have to wait for access to a pool. Important lessons about hazards, supervision, rescue, decision making, and safe behavior can begin on land. Practical prevention means starting with what a community already has, using evidence and expertise where needed, and avoiding the assumption that every solution must be built from scratch.

The conversation ultimately moves beyond creating water safety plans to the harder question of implementation. Plans are important, but their value comes from whether they lead to education, stronger local capacity, measurable action, and prevention in the real world.

“Water safety plans should not simply sit on a shelf; they should become a pathway for action.”

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August 16, 2026

Before the Rescue: Can Hawaiʻi Become the World’s Model for Water Safety?

Chief Kurt Lager on the Future of Ocean Safety in Hawaiʻi

What if the future of ocean safety begins before anyone needs rescuing?

Honolulu Ocean Safety is entering a new era. Now operating as an independent department, it has a greater ability to shape its staffing, equipment, facilities, budget and future direction. In this episode of Deep Dive Into Water Safety, Chief Kurt Lager explains how that change could help Hawaiʻi move beyond responding to emergencies and reach people before an emergency happens.

Better data is central to that vision. Through Watchtower, lifeguards can document not only rescues, but also the preventive actions they take every day. Those numbers can reveal patterns, guide resources and show a different measure of success: how many emergencies never happen because a lifeguard stepped in early.

The conversation also confronts one of Hawaiʻi’s most urgent challenges: protecting visitors, particularly from snorkeling related fatalities. Lager discusses working with the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority, airlines and other partners to deliver meaningful water safety information during booking, before arrival and throughout a visitor’s stay, rather than waiting until someone reaches the beach.

But lifeguards cannot do this alone. Lager calls for stronger collaboration among counties, educators, government and community partners such as Nā Kama Kai and the Hawaiʻi Water Safety Coalition. The episode also explores why meaningful water safety education must return to Hawaiʻi’s schools so children grow up recognizing hazards, making safer decisions and developing water competency.

The timing is especially meaningful. Lifeguard Appreciation Week runs August 17 through 23, 2026, while Duke Kahanamoku OceanFest takes place August 14 through 24, 2026. Together, they offer a powerful moment to recognize lifeguards, celebrate Hawaiʻi’s ocean culture and ask how that culture can become part of a stronger statewide system of prevention.

The episode builds toward a larger question: Can Hawaiʻi become the model for water safety that the rest of the world follows? For Lager, that is exactly the opportunity ahead.

“We should be a leader in water safety in the world. We should be the model that everyone else follows.”

Chief Kurt Lager

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What Nine Championships Teach You About the Ocean: Kanesa Duncan Seraphin

Nine-time Molokaʻi to Oʻahu prone paddleboard world champion Kanesa Duncan Seraphin has spent a lifetime learning from the ocean. A Hawaiʻi Waterman Hall of Fame inductee, marine scientist, educator, and host of the award winning Voice of the Sea, Kanesa brings a rare combination of elite ocean experience and scientific knowledge.

Fresh off her historic ninth M2O victory, Kanesa joins Deep Dive Into Water Safety to talk about what decades on the water have taught her about preparation, judgment, risk, and respect for the ocean. She also discusses work on ciguatera and why she joined a leg of Kauaʻi Ocean Safety Chief Kalani Vierra’s Paddle for Life, a 100-mile journey around Kauai focused on water safety, drowning prevention, and community awareness.

Throughout the conversation, one message keeps emerging: prevention requires more than telling people to “be careful.” Hawaiʻi needs better drowning and nonfatal incident data, stronger education, effective visitor communication, well supported and well-trained lifeguards, and practical safety systems that people can use. Lifeguards remain one of Hawaiʻi’s most important sources of ocean knowledge, yet the discussion highlights the need for greater recognition, staffing, training time, and investment in these frontline professionals.

Ultimately, this episode asks a larger question: Can Hawaiʻi make ocean competency part of its culture of prevention? From classrooms and canoe clubs to airports, airlines, beaches, and lifeguard towers, the opportunity is to give residents and visitors the knowledge, skills, judgment, and respect needed to make better decisions around the ocean.

It’s a conversation about much more than winning races. It’s about how experience, science, education, and connection to the ocean can help all of us make safer decisions in and around the water.

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July 30, 2026: Alissa Magrum paddles with Kalani Vierra for Paddle for Life

The conversation focuses on drowning prevention through awareness, collaboration, and data-driven solutions. Alissa Magrum (NDPA) discusses her participation in the Paddle for Life event, a 100-mile paddle around Kauaʻi led by Kalani Vierra, OSB Chief for Kauai, to raise awareness and funds for water safety. Alissa shares both the physical experience and the emotional motivation behind her work, emphasizing that drowning is often overlooked until it directly impacts families

A key theme is that drowning is a global, preventable issue that requires more public attention and everyday conversation

The interview then shifts to innovation, featuring Norm Reitter's Water Ranger program, which uses volunteers and mobile technology to collect real-time data on water conditions, behaviors, and safety equipment. This data helps identify risks, improve placement of resources like rescue tubes and life jackets, and guide prevention strategies

Overall, the discussion highlights:

• The power of community-driven awareness campaigns
• The need for better data to inform prevention efforts
• The importance of collaboration across organizations and regions to reduce drowning rates

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Building Water Competence: What Hawaiʻi Can Learn from England

Every child deserves the knowledge and confidence to make safe decisions around water. But what is the best way to teach it?

This episode explores England's nationally coordinated approach to water safety education and the lessons it offers for Hawaiʻi. It examines why England developed a National Water Safety Competency Framework and National Water Safety Education Pathway, bringing leading organizations together to deliver consistent, evidence based water safety education from early childhood through secondary school.

A central theme is the difference between teaching children to swim and developing true water competence, the knowledge, skills, judgment, and behaviors needed to recognize hazards, assess risk, make informed decisions, and respond safely in and around water.

The discussion explores how England is evaluating classroom and lifeguard led education, the importance of reinforcing water safety throughout a child's education, and the challenge of determining whether increased knowledge translates into safer behavior and fewer drownings.

The episode also examines emerging challenges, including climate change, heatwaves, flooding, storms, and changing coastal conditions. It highlights how these issues are being incorporated into school education, public awareness campaigns, and outreach efforts before periods of increased water risk.

Finally, the conversation considers practical ideas that could be adapted for Hawaiʻi, including proactive lifeguard engagement with beach users, measuring prevention activities alongside rescues, improving data collection on near misses and nonfatal drownings, and building on successful community programs such as Nā Kama Kai.

Whether you're a parent, educator, lifeguard, policymaker, or simply interested in drowning prevention, this episode demonstrates how a coordinated, evidence based approach to water safety education can help build lifelong water competence and save lives.

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**What's Your Kuleana?The Question Hawaiʻi Asks the World

What does kuleana really mean?

In this thought provoking conversation, award winning journalist Sara Kehaulani Goo, President of Creator Content at The Washington Post and author of Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawaiʻi, shares the story behind her family's effort to protect ancestral land on Maui and the deeper journey that followed into history, identity, culture, and the responsibilities we inherit from those who came before us.

Sara explains that kuleana is often translated as responsibility, but in the Hawaiian understanding it means much more. It is an honor, a stewardship, and a commitment to something larger than ourselves. It connects us to family, community, place, and future generations.

The conversation explores the legacy of the Māhele, the Hawaiian Renaissance, the experiences of Native Hawaiians living throughout the diaspora, and what visitors should understand when they come to Hawaiʻi. Sara encourages visitors to approach Hawaiʻi with curiosity, humility, and a desire to learn. She reminds us that Hawaiʻi is not simply a vacation destination, but a living culture, a unique environment, and a place with a rich history that deserves understanding and respect. She encourages visitors to become more informed travelers, to appreciate the culture and history of the islands, and to recognize their connection to the places and communities they visit.

Along the way, Sara challenges listeners to consider a simple but powerful question:

What's your kuleana?

For Deep Dive Into Water Safety, this conversation offers an important insight. Building a culture of safety is not only about sharing information. It is about helping people feel connected to the places they visit, and to the communities they become part of. People protect what they value, and they value what they understand.

Whether your kuleana is to family, culture, land, water, or community, this episode explores a Hawaiian idea that may have something to teach all of us.

Because the question is not just what kuleana means, the question is: What's your kuleana?**

2026 SUMMER TOUR

July 7, 2 pm Honoka'a, Big Island, @Beach Dog Books with Kolby Akamu Moser

July 7, 6 pm Kona, Hawai'i Island, @Kona Stories Words & Wine Author Night

July 8, 12 pm, Hilo, Hawai'i Island, at Hilo Public Library with Dr. Larry Kimura co-hosted by @Basically Books

July 10, 10:30 am, Honolulu, @Civil Beat with Blaze Lovell Register here.

July 11, 2 pm Honolulu, @Barnes & Noble in conversation with journalist and author Kirstin Downey

July 13, 12 pm Līhu'e, Kaua'i, @Līhu'e Public Library

6 pm, @Waimea Public Library

July 14, 10 am, Kaumakani, Kaua'i @Talk Story Bookstore

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