Beginning July 4, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission law enforcement officers will increase scrutiny of facilities that rent personal watercraft and other boats. The heightened enforcement efforts will continue throughout the boating season.

Col. Robert L. Edwards, the commission's director law enforcement, has directed his officers to make sure facilities that rent PWC and other boats are providing the public with boating safety information that is required by law.

"We must address careless operation and boaters not paying attention to what's going on around them." Edwards said. "Effective boater education is our best solution, and we hope the rental operators also understand how important it is."

New laws, effective Oct. 1, 2000, require businesses that rent boats, including PWC, to provide boating safety information. Employees putting patrons on rented craft must have completed a boater safety course approved by the FWC and the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators Information must include: the operational characteristics of the vessel; safe vessel operation and right-of- way; vessel operator responsibility; and local characteristics of the waterway where the vessel will be operated.

Anyone born after Sept. 30, 1980 who plans to rent a vessel with 10 horsepower or more must be able to show they have successfully passed an approved boater education course, or they can take a temporary certificate exam from a livery or marina that has contracted with the FWC to administer the exam. Rules also require rental businesses to display boating safety information in a visible place. And the age of a person who can sign the rental contract is now 18, up from 16.

In 2000, 75 percent of PWC accidents occurred on borrowed or rented watercraft. PWC comprised 13 percent of all registered vessels but accounted for 32 percent of all boating accidents (382 out of a total of 1,194 statewide) and 46 percent of all boating injuries, including nine fatalities.

The accident rate for PWC was 386.6 accidents per 100,000 registered vessels, more than three times the accident rate of all other vessel types. The most common type of PWC accident was collision with another vessel, followed by collision with a fixed object.