
A TRANSFORMATIONAL season on the region's beaches will come to a close early next week, with patrols due to decrease.
At Lake Macquarie, figures provided by the council showed crowd numbers were down nearly 40 per cent across the most recent season due to conditions "not seen along the city's coast for decades". In Lake Macquarie hazardous surf forced 100 beach closures, comfortably beating rips (18), storms and lightning (15) and poor water quality (four) for the most. Shark sightings closed the beach only six times this season, down from 16 the year before.