By Tony Reid
For a long, skinny, island nation, wonderfully placed in the South Pacific Ocean, we are not the best swimmers.
So what can be done to make us better?
Well, increasingly the answer is to start young.But there is a cost attached to teaching tots to swim at special very junior classes.
So, are there other options?
Baby McKenzie is just seven months old, but she's already learning to swim.
“It'll make a difference at the beach a lot more fun, me having the confidence handling her in the water and her being familiar with it,” says McKenzie’s mum, Jo Gear.
Baby McKenzie is one of a growing number of toddlers in over their head before they can walk, or talk. But can you really teach kids this young to swim?
Paddle Tots swim school instructor Lisa Cross says any child under 15 months is her ideal candidate - most of the toddlers she sees arrive at six to nine months.
In New Zealand, 98 people drowned last year, the second-lowest since records began.
But on a per capita basis, it is still twice that of Australia.
Matt Claridge, of Water Safety New Zealand, says the statistics are appalling.
“Twenty-one percent of kids can swim 200m by the time they are 12, that should be 100 percent,” he says.
And it's the boys who become men that Mr Claridge has grave fears about.
A major advertising blitz is currently underway to get the water safety message out. But as Campbell Live was putting this story together, news of another terrible drowning was revealed.
An 11-month-old baby girl died in Auckland after she was found face down in the family bath - a tragic reminder that a person can drown in as little at 8cm of water.
Campbell Live looks at what parents can do to keep their children safe in the water.