Life jackets will soon be mandatory for rock fishers along the Wollongong coastline, where six anglers have died in the past two years.
At its meeting on Monday night the council voted to opt in to state legislation that would declare the local government area high-risk for rock fishing.
This will allow it to secure government funding for improved signage, multilingual education campaigns and the enforcement of the life jacket rule.
The decision follows a review of rock fishing safety along the Wollongong coastline after the deaths of five men and a teenager at the popular Hill 60 outcrop since 2021.
"We have had the police come to us and ask us to take this on, we have had the people that respond to these incidents ask us to take this legislation on," councillor Linda Campbell told the meeting.
"We've got to do everything we can — not just to help people, but to help them make better choices for themselves.
"It will save lives. I'm convinced of that."
'I have witnessed the trauma'
In an impassioned speech the president of Surf Life Saving Illawarra echoed that sentiment.
"We have observed by our own experiences that our ability to achieve more favourable outcomes with persons in the water is largely dependent upon whether a fisherman is wearing a life jacket," Peter Evert said.
"I have witnessed the trauma of families grieving on the rock platform … sometimes days, waiting for an outcome of a rescue that has turned into a recovery mission.
"Our volunteers also feel the distress of a body recovery or retrieval.
"The impact is also felt by their immediate families who can be undesirably impacted by the risk that our volunteers face."
Gradual enforcement
In making the decision to enforce a life jacket mandate, the council also considered the responses of an online survey about rock fishing safety in the area.
Of more than 1,000 participants, 75 per cent said they fished every few months or more frequently, but 60 per cent said they either "never" or "rarely" wore a life jacket.
When asked if they supported the council's proposal to opt in to the legislation that would make it a legal requirement for rock fishers to wear a life jacket, 31 per cent did not agree with the idea, while 33 per cent supported it.
Thirty-four per cent of respondents indicated they were indifferent to the proposal.
"The councillors, I think, were persuaded not so much by the number of fatalities but the implications for those who have to go to the rescue," Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery said.
"The trauma that is inflicted on them, as well as the families that lose a loved one, that really moved the councillors."
New South Wales Police officers will enforce the mandate gradually, increasing patrols and issuing warnings over the next 12 months before fines are issued to individuals who fail to comply.
The council will also consider ways to provide the flotation devices to residents who cannot obtain their own, particularly due to financial constraints, and will gather data to determine the success of the program.
'It was palpable'
The decision comes days after the first of 10 rock fishing safety workshops to be rolled out statewide was conducted by Surf Lifesaving NSW at the deadly Hill 60 rock platform on Saturday.
Chief executive Steve Pearce said most of the participants who completed the program had travelled with their families from Western Sydney.
"We were oversubscribed — we had over 330 people turn up," he said.
"One hundred and twenty of those were rock fishermen and the others were their family members.
"We had over 20 different nationalities represented among this group, so it was a resounding success.
"It was palpable — you could feel the engagement, you could feel the want from these community members to learn."
All participants received a free life jacket and Mr Pearce said the organisation would consider returning to the region to deliver more of the workshops in future.
"I am very confident that this will save lives," he said.
