Many of New Zealand's recreational bathing sites unsafe to swim at on at least one occasion

Posted 12 months ago Less than a minute to read

The 2023 update for the surveillance report on ‘Faecal indicator bacteria at recreational bathing sites’ has just been published.

The key findings were:

The Gisborne, Hawkes Bay, and Southland regions had the highest proportion of unsafe freshwater bathing sites, with 100% of their sites receiving ‘poor’ grades. The Taranaki region had the highest rate of unsafe beaches, with 67% of all beaches being graded ‘poor’.
Based on monitoring undertaken between 2018–23, 51.2% of freshwater bathing sites (rivers and lakes) and 6.8% of marine bathing sites (beaches) could be considered unsafe for swimming at any time.
During the 2022/23 bathing season, 82.3% of monitored river swimming sites, 60.0% of beach sites and 47.5% of lake sites were unsafe to swim at on at least one occasion.
In the 2022/23 bathing season, 32.5% of monitored river swimming sites, 7.3% of beach sites and 1.7% of lake sites were frequently unsuitable for swimming, with 20.0% or more of routine monitoring results showing they were unsafe to swim.

The surveillance report can be found here.