Cameras fitted with beacons to help rock fishers in danger zones

State-of-the-art cameras fitted with beacons are being installed around some of the state’s most dangerous fishing spots in a bid to help rock fishers or swimmers who are washed out to sea. The cameras will transmit live pictures and audio to NSW Surf Life Saving HQ when an emergency button is pressed.

• Remains believed to be of missing fisherman located
• Rock fisherman dies after being swept into water

Cameras mounted on coastal cliffs and activated in emergencies will beam live images of rock fishers washed into the ocean or stranded swimmers at NSW’s most dangerous fishing spots and unpatrolled beaches.

The cameras and beacons are mounted to poles overlooking black spots, and live pictures and audio will be sent to NSW Surf Life Saving headquarters when an emergency button is pressed.

The new cameras which are being installed to help rock fishers who might be swept into water.

The first two emergency beacons will be installed within weeks at notorious fishing spot Snapper Point on the Central Coast and unpatrolled Shelly Beach near Manly.

A further 10 beacons will be rolled out at black spots in the next 10 months, although the exact locations still need to be approved by local councils.

Surf Life Saving NSW will next week meet with Kiama council to discuss installing the third beacon at the Kiama blowhole, where both rock fishers and tourists have died.

The permanent installations follow the successful trial of a prototype on Fingal’s Dreamtime Beach in the Hunter, which, although only 200 metres from the closest surf club, is unpatrolled and where six people have drowned since 2009.

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Whoever activates the emergency beacon by pressing the button will also be caught on video by a camera at eye-height, to help staff at the State Operations Centre in Belrose weed out hoaxes.

“We can switch on the camera on the top and surveil the immediate area to get eyes on the swimmer,” NSW Surf Life Saving chief operating officer Phil Ayres said.

“We would then call the nearest available service, whether that’s a surf life saving club, lifeguard or mobile duty officer, and get someone there ASAP.

“The whole time we can keep an eye on the situation to give the responded updated information before they arrive, which is simple but powerful.”

Rock fishing is the third highest cause of coastal drownings behind swimming and boating. However, only Randwick, Northern Beaches and Richmond Valley councils currently make rock fishers wear life jackets.

Every coastal council should make life jackets mandatory, according to Surf Life Saving NSW CEO Steve Pearce.

Surf Life Saver Brianna Coyte patrols around the Dee Why headland to make sure today. Brianna is a Volunteer Surf Lifesaver from Toowoon Bay SLSC. Picture: Tim Hunter.

Life jackets will be made mandatory for rock fishers by ­Ballina, Central Coast, Lake Macquarie, Port Stephens and Sutherland councils.

But NSW Recreational Fishing Alliance Safety Officer Malcolm Poole said there were major problems with the type of life jackets demanded by the state government, and where they must be used because of different council rules and boundaries.

ROCK FISHERMAN DEATH HAUNTS SURF LIFE SAVER

Surf Life Saver Brianna Coyte couldn’t stifle her anger when she found an inadequate life jacket in the farthest reaches of a dark water level cave, which had been worn by a dead rock fisherman she’d tried desperately to save.

“The only flotation at the front of the life jacket was some thin rubber rolled up like a newspaper and stuffed into pockets, so he would have actually have been pushed forward on to his face,” Ms Coyte said.

“It was actually really upsetting when I found the life jacket because this poor man thought he was being safe and doing the right thing by wearing a lifejacket but it actually would have hampered him.”

Brianna Coyte says life jackets really do save lives but they need to be up to Australian standards. Picture: Tim Hunter

The call had come through on the afternoon of Sunday, July 7, that a rock fisherman had fallen off a rock shelf near Timber Beach in the Munmorah State Conservation Area on the Central Coast, while leaning to land a fish.

When Ms Coyte, 36, arrived on the back of a jetski and swam into the cave alone, swells bouncing off the rock walls made it feel like she was “being flushed down a toilet” and her helmet smashed against the cave’s ceiling.

At one point, she was washed off one of the few rocks inside the cave she could stand on, and was sucked through a passage into a separate cavern.

“During all this time I’m screaming out at the top of my lungs, ‘this is Surf Life Saving, we’re here to help’ over and over but it was just so loud in there,” she said.

“I was told he’d been witnessed alive and was wearing a lifejacket so the chances of finding him were quite high and I really didn’t want to give up because his family were right outside the cave.”

Police divers arrived to take over the search. By then conditions were so wild, they couldn’t swim back to their support boat and instead hiked out of the bushland.

Ms Coyte was shaky, cold and couldn’t sleep for four days after the rescue attempt. In that time, the fisherman’s body washed ashore.

“A life jacket gives you buoyancy and can hold you above the water until assistance can come.”

But, Ms Coyte said, it must be the right type of life jacket.

Originally published as Cameras fitted with beacons to help rock fishers in danger zones