Despite low pay and scary reports about sun and skin cancer, beach patrols everywhere manage to hire lifeguards who look as if they're just having fun between Hollywood screen tests.

In Connecticut, part of one of the state's most popular beaches, at Hammonasset State Park, will be closed this year because the state did not have money to hire enough lifeguards.

But even lakes that have traditionally hired lifeguards cannot find any this year.

Individual parks get to keep most of the yield; the Virgin Islands fees will be used to improve toilets and showers, hire lifeguards and expand ranger programs.

If the state wants the public to have access to this beach, Mr. Ely believes, it should condemn it and compensate him, and then hire lifeguards and litter patrols.

Instead, the department made across-the-board cuts, including hiring fewer lifeguards, maintenance workers and law-enforcement aides.

Municipalities, counties and Island Beach State Park all hire lifeguards, who must pass physical and swimming tests and be able to earn a Red Cross lifesaving certificate.

It's hard to tell which is more ironic: that in a city nearly surrounded by water, most children don't learn to swim or that the island of Manhattan is hiring lifeguards from Poland.

"As the farmland is sold," she said, "we will get the money to develop the park, create a road, hire lifeguards and build a bathhouse with a nature center."

By 1980, the cove had stopped even hiring lifeguards because no one was swimming.