The number of drownings in 2023 was still higher than the 10-year average. Photo: Sharon Brettkelly
Water safety advocates say more work is needed to protect people from drowning, despite a slight drop in numbers.
Seven people drowned during this year's Christmas-New Year holiday - all of them male.
The provisional figure is in line with the 10-year average of 7.9 drownings, but lower than the nine deaths recorded during the last summer holidays.
Water Safety New Zealand has also tallied the number of drownings across the whole year, which shows 90 people died - fewer than in 2022.
However, chief executive Daniel Gerrard said that was partly because of bad weather and sewage leaks closing beaches.
"We really can't rely on bad weather to keep our drowning rates down. We need behaviour change, we need people to be swimming between the flags, we need little New Zealanders to be looked after by their family and whanau and parents," he said.
"But probably most importantly, we all need to be developing that skill of being able to float."
The number of drownings in 2023 was still higher than the 10-year average, Gerrard said, and signified 90 people who did not return home.
New Zealand has a high drowning rate compared to other Western nations like Australia, Canada and the UK. Older males and Maori are both over-represented in the statistics.
Rob Hewitt from Tangaroa Ara Rau - a collective of Maori water practitioners - said Maori have a unique relationship with water.
"You would not find a lot of Maori going to the beach and swimming between the flags, because their interaction with the water isn't recreationing. There's no recreational vocabulary within te reo Maori, it's 'okay, we're going down there to do a job, we're going down there to collect kai'."
However, Hewitt said with colonial displacement, some had lost that mātauranga or knowledge of water safety. The collective aimed to fill the gaps through practical water skills education, and more research on how Maori interact with water.
The former navy diver had his own harrowing near-death experience - in 2006, he spent four days and three nights drifting in the sea between Mana and Kapiti Islands.
"I had good gear, I had good knowledge, I had good practices," he said.
"But the arrogance, the ignorance still kicks in and it's making sure we have good discipline to fight that back. In Maori, we call that maui tikitiki."
Surf Life Saving chief operations officer Chris Emmett said lifeguards across the country have saved 263 lives this summer, and helped a further 315 people out of sticky situations. Those number were down after an extreme summer last year, particularly in the North Island.
"This year we've seen more of a typical summer cycle with the El Nino weather pattern coming through, which is pointing to the west coast of Auckland being a little bit of a hotspot for us. The east coast currently is experiencing less surf, but we did have challenging conditions in and around new year's eve."
The el nino weather pattern typically meant larger swells on the west coasts of the country and calmer seas on the east, Emmett said.