Surf Life Saving Australia's (SLSA) financial year recording period was not even one month old before another was added with the death on July 26 of a fisherman near Friar's Cave, in Kiama.

For the 2011-12 period, 16 people died while rock fishing.

In the eight years between 2004 and 2012 there was an average of 92 coastal drownings nationally a year. One in five was on a rocky coast and most of those were rock fishers.

In a bid to try and reduce the number of deaths, a federal Australian Research Council grant of more than $220,000 has been made to a research project involving the University of Wollongong (UOW), University of Melbourne and industry partner SLSA.

The project Rocky Coasts: A framework for risk assessment in order to reduce drowning aims to classify areas of the coast according to risk.

The research will also provide a picture of conditions and what to expect.

The ultimate aim is to make the information available to the public - similar to SLSA's 2010 beachsafe app, which provides information on the dangers of each beach.

UOW professor of geosciences - coastal geomorphologist, Colin Woodroffe, said the three-year project will involve a range of techniques to look at the morphology of the rocks, the types of rocks and wave conditions to compile a risk assessment.

The first phase of the project will focus research on the coast from Wollongong south and along the Great Ocean Road.

Prof Woodroffe said Kiama's rocky coast would figure prominently in the research.

"There is a good reason why Kiama is an appropriate place to start - the variability of the coast."

University of Melbourne coastal geomorphologist David Kennedy said his interest in preventing rocky coast deaths extended to his time as a surf life saving volunteer.

Dr Kennedy said there had previously been a lot of focus on beach drownings.

"With this grant came the opportunity to get into working out models to classify the coast. To say this area is more dangerous than this area and these are the reasons why."

Dr Kennedy said while it was obvious that waves knocked people off rocks, it was hoped this project would better explain conditions and perhaps even dispel the "rogue wave" notion.

He said by looking at things like channels and the way waves behave based on coastal morphology, it was possible some rogue waves could be "entirely predictable".

The plan was to "get the model right on our local coast" and implement it nationally.