Playa del Rey Beach

Playa del Rey Beach is the north end of Dockweiler State Beach, in the Playa del Rey neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Ballona Creek empties into Santa Monica Bay. The Works Progress Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built 2 rock jetties at the creek mouth in the 1930s, and the Marina del Rey breakwater sits offshore just to the north. Local surfers still call the northernmost stretch Toes Beach, short for Toes Over, a name taken from the hang-ten maneuver. Behind the sand, Del Rey Lagoon Park covers about 14 acres around a shallow 5-acre lagoon that connects to Ballona Creek through an underground pipe.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Playa del Rey ranked among the better surf spots in the Los Angeles area. The rock jetties built to hold back beach erosion, and later the construction of Marina del Rey, changed how the waves arrive, and the sand on either side of the breakwater is now steep enough that waves tend to break in very shallow water close to shore. Waves breaking straight onto that open sand place the beach in the surf zone biome.

Swimming, surfing, and hook-and-line fishing make up most of the use, and the jetties at the north end are a common place to fish. The Marvin Braude Bike Trail runs along the sand south toward Dockweiler and the South Bay. Water quality is a recurring concern. Ballona Creek carries urban runoff into the bay at the north end of the beach, and the Hyperion treatment plant to the south has occasionally sent emergency overflows into the nearshore water. In July 2021, about 17 million gallons of untreated sewage went out through the plant's 1-mile outfall, and health officials closed the beaches from El Segundo north to the south end of Playa del Rey until the water tested clean on July 14.

Free parking sits at Del Rey Lagoon Park and on the surrounding streets, and Los Angeles County runs a metered lot at 6201 Pacific Avenue. No marine protected area covers the beach, so fishing and spearfishing are legal under standard California regulations. Los Angeles County operates the beach, and County Code section 17.12.450 bars using or carrying a spear or other fishing gear in the ocean within 100 feet of anyone in the water who is not using the same.