Surfers’ injuries top $9m
Mick Andrews is sitting on his surfboard out among the waves on Mangawhai Beach as the sun rises over the east coast.
He takes a moment to soak up the surrounds of his home beach and remembers a moment that could have changed his life.
Andrews, 40, suffered a nasty head injury 22 years ago, at Easter. He knows how lucky he is to still be able to do what he loves.
‘‘These days surfing for me is an escape,’’ he says. ‘‘To be out in the water and in that beautiful scenery is pretty special. Maybe it’s a sign of maturity, but it’s good to just appreciate the act of doing it rather than just going out there to ride big waves or push myself.’’
Andrews is more cautious these days because he knows first-hand the impact of a surfing injury. In 1999, he made his way to O¯ akura in Taranaki for an Easter surfing camp.
He arrived a day early and went out for a surf with some mates at a place called Stent Road. The Aucklander remembers the surf was four to five feet, and it was powerful.
He was paddling back out when a massive wave broke right in front of him, and his leg-rope
helped bungy the board into his face.
Andrews floated to the surface, still conscious. He found his board, but he couldn’t see. ‘‘I felt quite scared. I definitely had a sense of dread that something seriously bad had just happened.’’
Andrews tried to paddle what he thought was in to shore, but he was going further out to sea, when his good mate Paul Marshall noticed something was up and paddled over to him.
‘‘Most people put on a brave face and say ‘it’s not too bad’. Well, he just looked at me and his face dropped.’’
There was blood coming out of his eye, and he spent a night in Taranaki Hospital.
‘‘I was pretty lucky I didn’t lose my eye.’’
ACC supported Andrews’ recovery with surgery and specialist care, but there were also longterm consequences.
‘‘The board hit me in the front of my mouth with a mighty force. That led to me getting abscesses in my two front teeth, which caused those teeth to die, and I had to have them replaced.’’
The impact from the board ripped his tear duct – which drains tears from your eyes to your nose –
and he had an operation to fix the tear duct where a stent was put in to link the two back up.
‘‘It didn’t work, so to this day if I go into a cool breeze and my eye creates tears, the tears just run down the left-hand side of my face because they don’t drain properly.’’
In the past five years ACC has accepted 27,350 surfing-related injury claims, costing $38 million. There were 5498 surfing injuries in 2020 costing $9.3m (the highest cost of this period).
‘‘As surfers we have to respect the ocean and acknowledge that our sport is an extreme sport and
does have its dangers,’’ says Lee Ryan, the development manager at Surfing New Zealand. ‘‘It’s just knowing how to minimise the risks and that comes with experience.’’ Helping Kiwis avoid these injuries is the key driver for ACC’s campaign ‘‘Preventable’’, which hopes to decrease the number of injuries and reduce their severity. ACC’s head of injury prevention, Isaac Carlson, says it’s estimated 90 per cent of injuries are predictable and therefore preventable.
Andrews will never forget that afternoon he was injured, and offers good advice for other surfers.
‘‘I’d say it’s good to surf at the edge of your ability but not beyond it,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s a healthy thing to push yourself a bit and ride waves that make you a little bit nervous, but you need to make sure you aren’t going out in conditions that are beyond your ability because it’s easy to get in trouble.’’