Redondo Beach

Redondo Beach is a stretch of South Bay shoreline in Los Angeles County, between Hermosa Beach to the north and Torrance Beach to the south. The shore-access pin sits at Veterans Park, a bluff-top park at the foot of Torrance Boulevard with a stairway descending to a rocky entry at the water. Immediately south stands the Redondo Beach Pier, a 70,000-square-foot horseshoe-shaped concrete structure built in 1995 after fire damaged earlier wooden iterations. South of the pier, the King Harbor breakwater encloses a protected boat harbor. North of Veterans Park, the Esplanade runs along the bluff above a sand beach.

The bottom at the immediate shore entry is sand, with breaking surf and no shore-accessible rocky structure or kelp at the named pin. The spot is a surf zone biome.

The defining sub-feature of Redondo Beach is the Redondo Submarine Canyon, reached by experienced scuba divers and freedivers swimming offshore from the Veterans Park entry. The bottom drops from a 35-foot sandy slope to depths past 100 feet within a quarter-mile of shore, and the highest concentration of marine life sits along the canyon edge between 60 and 80 feet. In most years, market squid spawn in aggregations along the canyon edge between 35 and 50 feet from mid-December through early March, and the squid run draws scuba divers and freedivers. The visibility report does not forecast conditions at canyon depth; the reported numbers reflect the surface and shore-zone water at Veterans Park, not the deeper canyon.

Hook-and-line fishing from Redondo Beach Pier is the most common surface activity at the spot, and shore fishing, swimming, and walking the Esplanade are all common. Surfing is uncommon at the immediate pin because the pier and breakwater break up the surf, though waves form on either side, and spearfishing is uncommon here as well.

Paid parking is available in the Veterans Park lot and in the pier complex lots, with metered street parking along the Esplanade. Spaces fill on summer weekends and during the squid run. No Redondo Beach ordinance sets a spearfishing exclusion around Redondo Beach Pier, though city code bars diving or jumping from the pier and requires a Harbor Master permit for skin or scuba diving inside the harbor. Fishing and spearfishing at Veterans Park are legal under standard California regulations.