Drowning is the leading cause of death among visitors and it seems to be going up every year. Hawaii’s rate of visitor death by drowning is 13 times the national average.

Visitors make up about one-half of drowning deaths; a drowning occurs about once a week in Hawaii.

Most of those visitors who die are from the U.S. mainland, but increasing numbers are from non-English speaking countries like Japan, China and Korea. Somehow they are not getting the word about how dangerous Hawaii’s waters can be. And we are not telling them.

State health officials have all the data and the urge to change things. But they and the counties lack resources.

The visitor industry is mostly silent. They want visitor industry numbers to increase beyond the current 8.6 million per year — but hotels don’t take responsibility for things that happen off their properties. There is little incentive to give people information that might frighten them and perhaps deter them from coming to Hawaii.

Demographics explains a lot of what happens. An autopsy data analysis by the state Department of Health of 571 cases revealed that 48 percent of those had heart conditions.

Of those, two-thirds were over the age of 50.

They represent a large percentage of the people who die while snorkeling. Older people don’t seem to know that after getting off a long flight to Hawaii from their country of origin they shouldn’t drink alcohol and swim in the ocean.

Younger people suffer traumatic injuries — 10 percent — from doing things like body surfing, diving into the ocean, getting swept by waves, jumping off ledges or drowning. A significant percentage (20 percent) had alcohol and/or illicit drugs in their system.

Social media now have a powerful impact on their behavior. It’s not by chance that ocean activities are the leading cause of spinal cord injuries in Hawaii.

The fact is that our small state is being overwhelmed by the increased number of visitors and the problems they bring with them. We can barely cope.

The doctors tell us there is a simple math to the analysis of survival. People are much more likely to die on Maui, Kauai or Hawaii than on Oahu, where there are more hospitals and more lifeguards on beaches.

Since 2002, county lifeguards have been protected from personal lawsuits by a state law, except in the case of gross negligence, that expires June 30.

Now members of the Legislature — even with the knowledge of the increasing numbers of deaths by visitors — want to gut the legislation in Senate Bill 562 that would extend the bill.

Its proponents believe that by punishing lifeguards and counties with threats of large punitive lawsuits — if they fail to save lives — it will make things safer.

If this law is passed all the counties, Oahu included, will probably have to take money away from the limited amount of funds that finance lifeguard services to pay the high fees that will be needed for defense attorneys. As a result they will have to reduce the number of lifeguards on its beaches.

We don’t have to guess what will happen next if we let this happen. Fewer lifeguards will mean less safety for visitors and residents alike. We need to support the lifeguards because it’s the right thing to do.

Mike Markrich is a Kailua-based research consultant and freelance writer.

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OFF TODAY:

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is off today.