There is no such thing as a "boating license" in Florida, and the state has no minimum boating age requirement. Moreover, folks born before January 1, 1988, who make up a huge portion of Florida's boat operators, need not undergo training to operate a vessel in Florida with ten horsepower or more.
Boaters born after that cutoff date have to obtain a boater education card issued by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), which involves several hours of courses and a final exam. Regardless of the on-paper bona fides, the state requires not a single moment of experience on a boat to obtain the card and get behind a vessel's helm.
Following a string of boating casualties in South Florida, the state's loose regulations and lack of boater training are back under scrutiny. New Times is awaiting word from state regulators on whether the driver involved in the fatal June 25 incident near Dodge Island, where a 30-foot-boat struck the Fisher Island ferry, had a boater education card or other training. But it's safe to say many do not and are cluelessly tooling around Biscayne Bay, the Intracoastal, and other waterways.
In more than half of all boating accidents in Florida last year, operators did not have formal boating education, FWC spokesperson Ashlee Sklute tells New Times. In 2022, captains with no formal boating education were responsible for 69 percent of fatal accidents, down from 83 percent in 2021.
Sklute says that in 2022, 64 percent of operators with no formal boater safety training were over 35 years old (i.e., folks mostly born before the mandatory training cutoff date). Operators over 36 represent the age group most frequently involved in accidents over the last ten years.
"These statistics show us that the boat operator most likely to be involved in a boating accident is a middle-aged or older male who has boating experience yet never learned the most important safety considerations by having taken a boating safety course," the FWC said in a 2022 report."The boat operator most likely to be involved in a boating accident is a middle-age or older male who has boating experience yet never learned the most important safety considerations."
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Ninety-seven percent of fatal boating accidents in 2022 had a male operator at the helm. (The report does not estimate what percentage of Florida boaters in total are men.)
The report found that there were 735 boat accidents in Florida waters in 2022, resulting in 65 deaths. Among Florida counties, Miami-Dade ranked second behind Monroe County (the Florida Keys) for boating accidents, logging 90 crashes, eight deaths, and 57 injuries.
The report says that while Florida had fewer overall boating accidents than in 2021, it saw more deaths.
Graphic by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
"The FWC encourages all boaters to take a boating safety course. We know that an educated boater is safer on the water," Sklute wrote in an email. "If a boat operator has taken a boating safety education course, the likelihood of their time spent on the water being a safe and enjoyable experience is much greater for them as well as their passengers."
Several recent fatal boating incidents in South Florida have brought training and boating safety into focus, including the June 25 crash in which a 30-foot boat struck the Fisher Island ferry near the Pilot House Station at Dodge Island –– killing one man, hospitalizing another in serious condition, and delaying travel for more than 15,000 cruise passengers at PortMiami. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
In an accident near North Key Largo last September, then-51-year-old George Pino crashed a vessel with a dozen teenage passengers into a channel marker and capsized while traveling down the Intracoastal waterway. All fourteen people aboard were ejected from the vessel, eight of whom were injured. Seventeen-year-old Luciana Fernandez died.
Despite the FWC report's initial statement that alcohol was not likely a factor in the crash, a lawsuit filed against Pino by the family of one of the injured passengers claims he was drinking that day and supplied the teens and their friends with alcohol.
In June 2022, two people were killed and ten others were injured after two boats collided near Key Biscayne. The previous month, a Texas man died in the Florida Keys after the boat he was riding crashed into a concrete power line pole. The driver, an Islamorada man, and his six passengers were ejected into the water during the accident.
While attempts to require state-issued boating licenses have died in Florida's legislature, some boating safety measures have been signed into law in recent years. In June 2022, the Boating Safety Act, which requires boat rental and jet ski operators to secure insurance, report accidents and overdue rentals to the FWC, and obtain a no-cost permit, was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The Florida law requiring those born on or after January 1, 1988 to take the boater training course was passed back in 2009 and went into effect into 2010. At the time, that meant boaters younger than 22 years old had to go through the course. As time passes, and a larger portion of the boating population has to meet the training requirements, a clearer picture is expected to emerge on the law's impact on accident rates.
Florida is among at least 30 states that have some form of safety training requirements for adult boaters, according to the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators. Unlike Florida, most states have a minimum age for piloting a boat, typically ranging from 12 to 16.
