9 Things Hawaii Lifeguards Wish Tourists Would Do Before They Ever Step In The Water – Number 5 Has Saved Lives

Visitors drown in Hawaii at about eight times the rate of locals.

After 30 years on Oahu, I’ve watched it happen from the sand, and it guts me every time. I’m no tour guide. I’m a neighbor who’s swum every island in this chain.

The ocean here is the most beautiful thing you’ll ever see, and the most underestimated. These nine things change everything, and number five has pulled people back from the dead.

Check The Water Before You Even Leave Your Room

The ocean here is a different animal every single day. What looked like glass yesterday can be a washing machine this morning. 🌊

So before you grab your towel, check the conditions. There’s a free site the lifeguards actually use. It’s called hawaiibeachsafety.com, run by the Hawaiian Lifeguard Association with the University of Hawaii and the Department of Health.

It updates every 15 minutes. You get three warning levels. Caution, High Hazard, and Extreme Hazard.

Pro tip: Bookmark that site right now. Do it before you forget.

Then learn the yellow and black signs at the beach. They aren’t decorations. High Surf. Strong Current. Dangerous Shore Break. Sharp Coral. Sudden Drop-Off. Each one is there because somebody got hurt where you’re standing.

Here’s the myth I want to kill early. A calm-looking photo means nothing. The water doesn’t care what your Instagram showed yesterday. It changes by the hour, and the prettiest spots hide the meanest currents.

Knowing the forecast is step one. But there’s a bigger mistake most folks make before they ever get wet, and it’s the one that fills the ambulances.

Only Swim Where A Lifeguard Can Watch You

This is the simplest rule, and it saves the most lives. Pick a beach with a tower.

Here’s the part that stops people cold. Hawaii has over 1,000 miles of coastline. The state Ocean Safety crew guards only 47 beaches.

Forty-seven. So most of the sand you’ll see has nobody watching it at all.

And the bodies pile up in those blind spots. Civil Beat reported that two-thirds of our ocean drownings happen at unguarded beaches.

The United States Lifesaving Association says your odds of drowning at a guarded beach are about 1 in 18 million.

Wander two miles from a tower, though, and the danger jumps way up.

Our lifeguards aren’t sitting around getting tan, either. In 2022, Oahu crews pulled off 2,682 rescues and made over 187,000 preventive moves. That’s somebody who warned or walked back to safety every three minutes.

Now here’s a thought that stirs the locals up. Some residents are flat-out tired of risking their necks for visitors who duck under the caution tape. One guy I know filmed a couple doing exactly that and just muttered, “This is why people don’t like tourists, bro.”

Harsh? Maybe. But there’s a free way to never be that story, and almost nobody uses it.

Walk Up And Actually Talk To The Lifeguard

Most visitors never figure this out. The lifeguard wants to talk to you. Walk up and ask one question. “Where’s it safe to swim today?”

That’s it. They’ll point you to the calm spot and steer you off the nasty one. They do it all day. You’re not bugging them. You’re doing exactly what they wish you’d do.

Kurt Lager became Honolulu’s first Ocean Safety Chief, and he said it plain. “People maybe aren’t fully thinking about what they’re getting themselves into before they visit a beach.” He said something else that sticks with me. Any beach, any time, can be dangerous, even with no waves at all.

And get this one. A Hanauma Bay lifeguard named Josh Guerra told Civil Beat that some tour operators tell guests they don’t even need to know how to swim. Let that land. People show up to the ocean having been told swimming is optional.

The lifeguards aren’t the only locals with a wish list, either. There’s a whole set of things locals hope you sorted out before the plane even landed, and they cost nothing to follow.

So ask. Ask even if you feel silly. Especially then. The folks who drown are usually the ones too proud or too rushed to ask anybody anything. But asking only helps if you also use your own eyes first.

Stand There And Watch The Water For 20 Minutes

Patience is a survival skill out here. Before you step in, just stop and watch the ocean for a solid 20 minutes.

I know. Twenty minutes feels like forever when the water’s right there. Do it anyway. Watch a full set of waves roll through. The ocean comes in cycles. A calm patch gets followed by a wall of water that knocks you flat.

While you watch, hunt for the rip current. It’s that gap of calmer, darker water cutting through the breaking waves. Here’s the part to read twice.

The calmest water on the beach is often the most dangerous water on the beach. That flat, peaceful lane is not the easy way in. It’s a river flowing straight out to sea.

Years back, near Makapuu, I watched two visitors wade toward a gap like that. The water looked like a swimming pool. I started over because I knew that flat patch was a drain, not a door.

Before I got there, a lifeguard blew his whistle and waved them back hard. That “calm” lane would’ve carried them past the point in under a minute. They never knew how close they got.

Calm doesn’t mean safe. Sometimes calm is the warning. That’s the exact trap at spots that look like a postcard, where the resort brochures stay quiet about the things that quietly ruin vacations at Hawaii’s most family-friendly looking lagoons.

And the calmest water of all hides the one skill that has saved more visitors than any other.

Learn To Beat A Rip Current Before You Ever Need It

This is number five, and it’s the one that pulls people back from the dead. If you remember nothing else, remember this. Don’t fight the current.

A rip does something the ocean does almost nowhere else. It flows backward, out to sea, faster than any human can swim.

The Lifesaving Association says rips cause about 82% of all their surf rescues.

The National Weather Service counted 64 surf-zone deaths nationwide in 2024, and 59 came from rips. You will not win a straight fight. Nobody does.

So here’s the move. Flip, float, and follow. Flip onto your back. Float to catch your breath and kill the panic. Then follow the current sideways, swimming parallel to the beach until you’re out of the river. When the pull lets go, angle back to shore.

A veteran lifeguard named Bruce Hopkins put it best at a rip current clinic this year. “If you can talk in a rip current, you’re doing it right.” Meaning, if you’ve calmed down enough to speak, you’ve already won half the fight.

Here’s the deadly instinct nobody warns you about. People panic, swim straight at the beach with everything they’ve got, and the shore keeps getting farther away. The tired ones float on their backs to rest, and the rip just carries them out deeper.

So flip. Float. Go sideways. Say it out loud so your kids hear it. Because the ocean has another trick, and this one comes from behind.

Never Turn Your Back On The Ocean

Duke Kahanamoku, our greatest waterman, gave us this rule. Never turn your back on the ocean. It’s the spine of everything I’m telling you.

It means two things. Watch for the wave that’ll take your legs out. And respect the water as something bigger than you.

Most injuries don’t happen out in the deep. They happen ankle-deep, to someone facing the sand for a photo, while a wave they never saw slams them down.

It gets worse on the rocks. People love to scramble out for the perfect shot. Then a rogue wave plucks them off like a leaf.

At a spot called China Walls, the Department of Land and Natural Resources logged 16 fire department rescues in 2024 alone. A DOCARE officer, Lt. Vance Lime, explained what happens once you’re in there. “Once they panic, they’re pushed off the point, and this current line will take them all the way to Diamond Head.”

Down the coast at Spitting Cave, a young man died cliff-jumping in February 2025. At the Halona Blowhole lookout, a woman fell to her death in July 2024. These aren’t far-off legends. They’re recent, and they keep happening.

So keep your eyes on the water. Always. Even when you think you’re safe on dry rock. Especially then. ⚠️

There’s one activity, though, that fools more people than any wave ever could, and it looks completely harmless.

Take Snorkeling Way More Seriously Than It Looks

Here’s the contrarian truth that’ll surprise you. Snorkeling is the deadliest thing tourists do in our water. Not surfing. Not cliff jumping. Floating face-down in calm, shallow water.

The Hawaii Department of Health counted 225 snorkeling deaths from 2014 to 2023.

Of those, 205 were visitors. The state’s own Snorkel Safety Study, paid for by the Hawaii Tourism Authority, reached a blunt conclusion. The problem is the snorkel. Snorkeling itself is a hazard.

How? It’s a quiet thing called rapid-onset pulmonary edema. Breathing through a tube creates suction in your chest. That suction can pull your own body’s fluid into your lungs. People drown in three feet of calm water, with no splash and no scream.

Dr. Philip Foti, the pulmonologist who led that research before he passed in 2024, didn’t soften it. “I’m terrified. You should be,” he said.

I watched it almost happen at Hanauma Bay once. An older guy floating still, too still, while everyone around him assumed he was just looking at fish. A lifeguard reached him in seconds and dragged him up. No struggle, no shouting. That’s what makes it so scary.

Hanauma charges $25 to get in and makes you watch a 9-minute safety video first. There’s a reason.

And none of this hits harder than when you’re wrecked from travel. Most tourists make their worst water decisions in the first 48 hours, running on the jet lag they never planned for. If you can beat the long flight over instead of arriving as a zombie, you’ll make smarter calls at the water’s edge.

A few real snorkel rules before you go.

• 🤿 Never snorkel alone. The deaths are silent, so you need eyes on you.
• Don’t go straight off the plane. Rest a day and let your body adjust.
• Skip the full-face mask if you’re unsure about it.

There’s one more beach that’s gorgeous and built to hurt you, and the locals named it after what it does.

Stay Away From The Waves That Break Necks

Some beaches are beautiful and brutal. Sandy Beach on Oahu is the one I beg people to respect.

Locals call it “Broke Neck Beach,” and they’re not joking. The waves break straight down onto sand packed hard as concrete. Civil Beat reported it racks up around 800 rescues a year, more than any other beach on the island, for spinal injuries.

A lieutenant there, Kawika Eckart, said, “This is not a place to fool around.” Another official, John Titchen, was blunter. “Even on the safest day, it is experts only.”

Here’s the stat that should stop you. Hawaii Ocean Safety says the average wave height when someone breaks their spine is just three feet.

Three feet. That’s a wave you’d laugh at from the sand.

A 2019 study by Steinemann, Galanis, and their team found 28% of all spinal cord injuries in Hawaii come from waves, and 81% of those victims are visitors. Mostly men, average age in their fifties, doing nothing fancy.

The shore break grabs you, lifts you, and spikes you head-first into the sand. It happens in a heartbeat. You don’t get a second try with your neck.

Pro tip: If you see waves curling and slapping right onto the sand with no real beach to swim off, that’s shore break. Watch the bodysurfers. If they’re all locals who’ve done it ten thousand times, keep your feet on dry ground.

There’s one last habit that turns a fine day deadly, and nobody likes hearing it.

Know Your Limits And Skip The Beach Beers

The ocean doesn’t care how good a swimmer you were back home. The Kauai lifeguards have a motto worth tattooing on your arm. “If in doubt, don’t go out.”

We’ve got a Pidgin saying here that fits the water perfectly. “If can, can. If no can, no can.” The ocean decides, not your ego. Some days it says yes. Some days it says no. Your job is to listen.

So a few honest limits. Don’t drink and swim. Booze and shore break and rip currents are a terrible mix. Don’t swim alone. And if your gut says no, trust it over your travel schedule.

Then there’s the small stuff that wrecks trips. Box jellyfish show up on Oahu’s south shores like clockwork, about 8 to 10 days after the full moon, per the Waikiki Aquarium’s calendar. 🪼

In December 2024, more than 150 people got stung at Waikiki in a single day.

Here’s a myth to bust. The Portuguese man o’ war isn’t even a jellyfish. It’s a different creature, the wind blows ashore. And the stings aren’t the only locals in that water, which is its own conversation once you read what’s actually swimming around you.

Insider tip: Get in the water before 10 am. The trade winds haven’t kicked up the afternoon chop yet, the water’s glassy, and the lifeguards are fresh on tower. Locals know the morning ocean is a gentler ocean. Most tourists sleep through the safest hours.

So, where’s the calm, guarded water actually worth booking near?

Where To Stay Near The Calm, Safe Water

I’ll keep this short, because the ocean’s the star. But where you sleep decides which beach you’ll wander to half-asleep with your coffee.

• Waikiki is your safest bet for swimming. An offshore reef breaks up the surf, so the water stays gentle and waist-deep, and city lifeguards patrol several towers.

• The iconic Royal Hawaiian sits right on the sand for around $500 a night.

• The elegant Halekulani runs a notch higher, and the Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort puts you on the beach for less.

• Booking on a budget? The Sheraton Princess Kaiulani starts near $160, a two-minute walk from the roped-off swimming ponds.

• Traveling with little kids? The calmest water on Oahu sits in the man-made lagoons at Ko Olina, at Aulani, A Disney Resort, or Marriott’s Ko Olina Beach Club.

• On Kauai, the Sheraton Kauai Resort sits by Poipu Beach Park, one of the island’s few guarded beaches with a walled kiddie pool.

One honest caveat. Those lagoons are calm but not officially lifeguarded, so still watch your keiki.

The hotel’s just a basecamp, though. Most of what saves you from a bad day in Hawaii is decided before you ever leave home, not at check-in.

One Last Thing Before You Go In

The ocean out here gives so much. Warm salt on your skin, plumeria drifting off the beach path, the sound of waves you’ll hear in your dreams for months. I want you to have all of it.

Pro tip: Travel insurance with medical evacuation coverage is the quiet smart buy for a Hawaii trip. A rescue from a remote stretch, or a medical flight, can cost more than your whole vacation.

So slow down. Watch the water. Ask the lifeguard. Float, don’t fight. We have a phrase, malama i ke kai, which means care for the ocean. Out here, it cares back when you respect it.

The hard part isn’t learning these nine things. It’s remembering them on day three, when you’re tan and loose, and the water looks so friendly. That’s the day it tests you. And what you do in that one moment is the whole story.