One organisation in the United States counts paddleboarding deaths, and it publishes the count once a year in a PDF that almost nobody opens.
That is the U.S. Coast Guard. Every figure below comes from its casualty tables, and we went through six annual editions rather than one so the trend is measured instead of guessed.
The short answer first: 29 people died on a stand up paddleboard in 2024. The longer answer is that this is a floor rather than a census, and the reason why matters more than the number.
Table of contents
Key takeaways
- 29 people died on stand up paddleboards in the United States in 2024, the highest annual count on record.
- That happened in the same year total American boating deaths fell to a twenty year low of 556.
- The six year series runs 12, 10, 18, 17, 11, 29. The 2024 figure is nearly triple the year before it.
- 26 of the 29 drowned. At 90 percent, paddleboards have close to the highest drowning share of any vessel type.
- 24 of those 26 drowning victims were not wearing a life jacket.
- Paddleboarding is one of the few activities where deaths outnumber reported injuries, 29 against 13.
- Only 40 paddleboards appeared in a reportable incident all year, and those 40 boards produced 29 deaths.
- Our own calculation puts the risk near 0.8 deaths per 100,000 paddleboarders a year, in the same range as kayaking.
How many paddleboarders die
29 people died on paddleboards in 2024
The Coast Guard recorded 29 deaths aboard stand up paddleboards in calendar year 2024. This comes from Table 24 of its annual casualty report and is the highest figure the agency has ever published for the vessel type.1
The record came in the safest boating year in two decades
Total recreational boating deaths in 2024 were 556, the lowest in the twenty year series that starts in 2005 and well below the 767 of 2020. Paddleboards nonetheless hit their peak in the same year, taking their share of all boating deaths to 5 percent.2
The six year series reads 12, 10, 18, 17, 11, 29
Looking up Table 24 in each annual report rather than interpolating from percentages gives 12 deaths in 2019, 10 in 2020, 18 in 2021, 17 in 2022, 11 in 2023 and 29 in 2024. The pattern is not a smooth climb. It is a plateau around 15 with one sharp break at the end.34567
2020 is the only year where every victim drowned
The 2020 report records 10 paddleboard deaths and 10 drownings, a share of 100 percent. No other year in the series reaches that, and no other vessel type reached it in 2020 either.4
2021 was the first year paddleboards passed 3 percent
With 18 deaths against 658 total, 2021 was the first year the Coast Guard listed paddleboards at 3 percent of all boating deaths. The same table shows them at 0 percent for 2010, 2011 and 2012.5
Of the 17 paddleboard deaths in 2022, 16 were drownings, a share of 94 percent. That is the highest the vessel type has recorded, ahead of the 90 percent of 2024 and the 100 percent of 2020, which rests on only ten cases.6
2023 was the quiet year before the jump
The 2023 report counted 11 paddleboard deaths, 10 of them drownings, the lowest since 2020. The following year the count reached 29. A single year of movement on this scale should be treated with caution until 2025 is published.7
How paddleboarders die
26 of the 29 drowned
Drowning was the cause in 26 of the 29 paddleboard fatalities of 2024. The other three fall under causes other than drowning, a category covering trauma, hypothermia and cardiac events.8
Paddleboards sit at 90 percent in the 2024 drowning table, behind only inflatables at 93 percent on a base of 14 deaths. Kayaks are at 87 percent, canoes at 84 percent, open motorboats at 60 percent and personal watercraft at 26 percent. Across all boating the figure is 66 percent.9
Deaths outnumber injuries, 29 to 13
Paddleboards produced 29 deaths and only 13 reported injuries in 2024. Almost every other vessel type runs the other way. Personal watercraft produced 38 deaths and 563 injuries. A paddleboard incident serious enough to be reported at all is usually a fatal one.10
Only 40 paddleboards appeared in reported incidents all year
Across the whole country, 40 paddleboards were involved in a reportable boating incident in 2024, out of 5,365 vessels in total. Those 40 boards produced 29 deaths. The ratio is the most striking number in the report.11
Kayaks caused 89 deaths, canoes 25
Within paddlecraft, kayaks are the biggest contributor at 89 deaths and 44 injuries, followed by paddleboards at 29 and canoes at 25 deaths with 16 injuries. All three share the same pattern of more deaths than injuries. Together the three account for 143 deaths, or 26 percent of the national total.12
Life jackets and the numbers behind them
24 of the 26 drowning victims wore no life jacket
Of the 26 people who drowned from a paddleboard in 2024, 24 were not wearing a personal flotation device and two were. There were no unknowns in the paddleboard column, which makes it one of the cleanest rows in the report.13
Not one of the 21 canoe drowning victims wore one
The canoe column is starker still. All 21 people who drowned from a canoe in 2024 were recorded as not wearing a flotation device, with none wearing and none unrecorded. Among the 77 kayak drownings, 16 were wearing one.14
Across all boating, 310 of 365 drowning victims wore nothing
Taking every vessel type together, 365 people drowned in recreational boating incidents in 2024. Of those, 310 were not wearing a flotation device, 48 were, and 7 were unrecorded. That is 85 percent of the whole and 87 percent of the cases where wear was established.15
The Coast Guard prints the 87 percent figure itself
The report opens with the line that where personal flotation device usage was known, 87 percent of fatal victims were not wearing one. Both denominators appear in the same document, which is why this page gives you both rather than the flattering one.16
Small craft dominate the drowning column
Vessels under 16 feet accounted for 217 deaths in 2024, of which 164, or 76 percent, were drownings. The Coast Guard summarises it as four of every five drowning victims being aboard a vessel under 21 feet. Every paddleboard falls inside that first bracket.17
Who dies, and when
10 of the 29 victims were in their twenties
The age table places 10 of the 29 paddleboard victims in the 20 to 29 bracket, the largest single group by a wide margin. Four each fell in the 40 to 49 and 50 to 59 brackets, and three each in 13 to 19, 30 to 39 and 60 to 69.18
Paddleboard victims skew younger than kayak victims
Thirteen of the 29 paddleboard victims, nearly half, were between 20 and 39. Among the 89 kayak victims the same band covers 31 people, about a third, and the largest kayak groups sit at 40 to 49 and 30 to 39. One paddleboard victim was twelve or younger and the oldest was in the 70 to 79 bracket.19
Five of the 40 boards were rentals
Of the 40 paddleboards involved in reported incidents, 5 were rented, 21 were not, and for 14 the rental status was never established. Three of the 29 deaths happened on a rented board, 16 on a private one, and 10 could not be assigned either way.20
July is the deadliest month on American water
Across all recreational boating, July produced 115 of the 556 deaths in 2024, ahead of June at 78 and August at 68. Saturday and Sunday together account for 294 deaths, more than half the annual total falling on two days of the week.21
How risky paddleboarding actually is
Roughly 0.8 deaths per 100,000 paddleboarders a year
This is our own calculation and no official body publishes it. Setting the 29 deaths of 2024 against the 3,739,000 Americans who paddleboarded in 2021, the most recent freely published participation figure, gives about 0.78 deaths per 100,000 participants, or one death for every 129,000 people who go out in a year. The two figures come from different years and different surveys, so treat it as an order of magnitude rather than a rate.221
Kayaking lands in the same range
The same arithmetic on kayaking gives between 0.5 and 0.7 deaths per 100,000 participants, depending on whether you count recreational kayaking alone at 13.35 million people or add sea and whitewater kayaking on top. Paddleboarding and kayaking sit in the same order of magnitude, which is the honest conclusion rather than a ranking.231
The official 4.8 per 100,000 rate does not describe paddleboarding
The Coast Guard headline rate of 4.8 deaths per 100,000 is calculated against registered vessels, and only 628,507 of the 11,674,073 registered recreational vessels in 2024 were paddlecraft of any kind. Most paddleboards are registered nowhere, so applying that rate to them produces a number without meaning.24
A death counts only if the board was a vessel in use
The Coast Guard states that its publication reflects watercraft that have been deemed a vessel, and that reports involving watercraft not determined to be vessels are excluded from the main body of the report. A board used as a swimming float, or one used inside a designated swimming area, can fall outside the count entirely. The published figure is therefore a floor.25
Frequently asked questions
Use this data
Every figure on this page is free to reuse in articles, presentations and research, as long as you link back to this page. Where a number is our own calculation rather than a published statistic, the sentence containing it says so.
Cite this report
Copy one of the citations below.
Sources
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 24 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Tables 25 and 29 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2019, Table 24 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2020, Table 24 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2021, Tables 24 and 25 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2022, Table 24 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2023, Table 24 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 24 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 24 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Tables 24 and 27 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 14 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Tables 24 and 27 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 35 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 35 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 35 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Executive Summary (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 15 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 26 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 26 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 14 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Table 12 (uscgboating.org)
- Outdoor Industry Association, 2022 Outdoor Participation Trends Report, paddlesports participation series (outdoorindustry.org)
- Outdoor Industry Association, 2022 Outdoor Participation Trends Report, kayaking participation series (outdoorindustry.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Tables 31 and 37 (uscgboating.org)
- U.S. Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Explanation of the Data (uscgboating.org)
