Long Beach

Long Beach runs five miles of Los Angeles County coastline, anchored at its center by Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier, a 1,620-foot concrete pier at 35 39th Place off Ocean Boulevard. The current pier was built in 1967 to replace an earlier wooden structure and was upgraded through the 2010s. The shoreline is broken into named segments: Alamitos Beach just east of downtown, Junipero Beach and Long Beach City Beach in the central stretch about a mile west of the pier, and Belmont Shore Beach extending east from the pier to 55th Place. Alamitos Bay and Naples Island sit immediately east of Belmont Shore. The defining structure of the central shoreline is the Long Beach federal breakwater, a two-mile rock wall built by the US Navy from 1942 to 1949 to protect the inner harbor from open-ocean swell. The breakwater has been the subject of a multi-decade reconfiguration debate over surf restoration and flood protection.

Inside the breakwater shadow the water is calm, with low wave energy and a sand bottom that supports halibut and bat ray. That makes the central beaches a bay biome. East of the pier, Belmont Shore Beach falls outside the breakwater's full effective shadow and takes breaking surf over a sand bottom, which puts that segment in a surf zone biome.

Hook-and-line fishing from Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier and from shore is a dominant use. Summer swimming is heavy along Junipero Beach and Long Beach City Beach. Paddleboarding is well-known on the protected water inside the breakwater and on Alamitos Bay, both of which serve as launch zones, and Belmont Shore Beach, outside the breakwater's shadow, draws some surfing. Spearfishing is legal along the open shoreline under standard California regulations but is uncommon at the central beaches, where there is no rocky structure or kelp to hold fish; snorkeling and scuba are uncommon for the same reason.

Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier has a paid lot at its base, with metered street parking on Ocean Boulevard. Junipero Beach and Alamitos Beach, one to two miles west, have additional paid lots along Shoreline Drive and Ocean Boulevard. Spaces fill on summer weekends, especially during the Long Beach Grand Prix and Pride. Spearfishing is prohibited within 1,000 feet of Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier per California Code of Regulations Title 14 § 1.88. The remaining stretch of beach is open under standard California regulations.