Calmer conditions on the water lead to better season for business

Charter businesses were hit particularly hard, with the rough ocean conditions making it near impossible for them to get customers out on the water.

Thankfully, the 2019/2020 summer holiday season was a lot kinder.

"It was a hell of a lot better than last year," Reel Ocean Adventures' owner Phil Gogerly said.

Mr Gogerly said he'd taken close to 400 people out on his fishing charter boat since December and had been running two charters a day around Christmas.

Over the previous season, he was forced to cancel 44 of the 53 charters he had booked.

He said conditions were a lot more favourable this year, with calmer seas and variable winds.

With an absence of large swells, he also said it was a great season for fishing.

"All of the fish gradually made their way in close. We've had days where we've bagged out on snapper, we've bagged out on trag (teraglin)," he said.

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Ron Hunter of Dive Forster agreed it'd certainly been a better summer than last year, but conditions were still challenging at times.

"Straight after New Year's we had a nor-easter that dropped the water temperature from 22 degrees to 15 degrees and the visibility in the water from 20 metres down to zero," he said.

"It lasted about a week. It was undiveable."

Another factor he believed did the area's marine tourism industry no favours was a story the Seven Network ran on both its National news program and its morning show, Sunrise, in early January.

A young drone operator captured footage of a shark cruising close to swimmers at Forster Main Beach and both programs identified the creature as a great white.

But Mr Hunter, who has been diving with sharks for decades, says it was clearly a grey nurse shark, which is not considered dangerous.

"It was just sensationalist scare-mongering," he said.

"The story wasn't right."

Mr Hunter's daughter wrote to the network and asked them to do a retraction but was disappointed not to receive a reply.

Down the coast at Pacific Palms, Gary Hughes of Surface Surf School thought it was a much better season than last year.

"We didn't have near the amount of nor-easters so the water was a lot warmer," he said.

With water restrictions in place and the recent bushfires on the Mid North Coast, Mr Hughes was surprised to see so many tourists in the area.

"We had a good season," he said.

"We had a lot more people this year."

In fact, he said the bushfires that ravaged the South Coast of NSW during December and January saw quite a few people come up here instead.

But Mr Gogerly believed the bushfires and the drought still had an impact on the amount of visitors to the region.

"People were scared to travel because of the bushfires," he said.

"Even the traffic going across the bridge was only banked up for a few days between Christmas and New Year's."

However, he believed the area could experience a really good season next summer if the drought broke and the conditions once again cooperated.

"If we can get rain, by next Christmas I think everybody will be happy," Mr Gogerly said.

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