Southern California Tide Pools - Where are your favorite tide pools?

[mad hatter fan]

We have been to the tide pools at Heisler Beach in Laguna Beach. For our upcoming trip in June it looks like our best bet for a low tide during daylight hours is on June 26th at 8:18 am with a 0.3 low tide. We may be in the San Diego area that morning. The ones at Cabrillo National Monument looked good but it doesn't open until 9. Where are your favorite Tide Pools? In the San Diego area or Orange County in case we head back up toward Anaheim the night before. I'd also be interested in how easy or hard they are to get to. Thanks!

 

[Purrkins]

Sunset Cliffs (just South of Point Loma) is nice. Windansea in La Jolla (south side of the beach) is great as well. Easy to get to. And then just north of the Scripps Pier on La Jolla Shores are some very nice pools.

Have fun!

 

[Supplanter]

La Jolla cove is nice, you can snorkel there too and there's a cool sea cave.
Laguna and Corona del mar have some of the best tide pools around but -.3 isn't gonna expose much besides mussels and starfish.

 

[Jajone]

Midwesterner here. What exactly are tide pools? How do I find out when the low tides are?

 

[Supplanter]

Midwesterner here. What exactly are tide pools? How do I find out when the low tides are?

tide pools are pools that are sometimes open ocean, sometimes closed off from the ocean as the tide rises and falls. They can have huge amounts of marine life- small fish, starfish, urchins, crabs, mussels, anemones, sea cucumbers, octopus, etc...
Just google surf report so cal or high tide times so cal to find out the timing. Low tide is obviously best, but usually you can see something either way as long as its not high tide.
You also want to look at the number next to the tide. Itll be a + or - and then a number. Thats how many feet above or below normal thr tide is expected to be on average. The more negative the number the more stuff that'll be exposed.

 

[hsmamato2]

This is cool, I'd like to find these near San Clemente, anything to look for near that area?

 

[Purrkins]

Dana Point is a Marine Protected Area and has some decent tide pools behind the Ocean Institute at Dana Bay. Check tide calendars however - if not low enough, there will just be a bunch of slippery rocks to trip over.

 

[hsmamato2]

Ocean Institute in Dana Point, it appears this area might have tide pools that are somewhat easy to access and view? any advice?