Jade Cove

Jade Cove is a rocky pocket cove on the southern Big Sur coast, about 2 miles south of Sand Dollar Beach and roughly 3 miles north of Gorda. The shoreline and shallow reef here hold the only concentrated underwater deposit of quality nephrite jade in the world, and four color varieties are documented at the site: the common green, the blue-black striped Vulcan, blue, and botryoidal. A jade-collecting community grew up around the cove and is celebrated at the annual Big Sur Jade Festival, which dates to 1989.

Commercial jade divers worked the cove in the 1960s and early 1970s and floated multi-ton nephrite boulders to the surface with commercial-scale lift bags. The 1992 designation of Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary banned mineral removal along the sanctuary coastline, which unintentionally criminalized picking up a jade pebble on the beach. NOAA later carved out an exception between the south end of Sand Dollar Beach and Cape San Martin: only loose jade below the mean high tide line may be collected, only hand tools may be used to lift or scratch a rock to test it, no digging or prying from bedrock is allowed, collectors may take only what they can individually carry, and divers may use lift bags with a combined capacity of no more than 200 pounds, up to 90 feet of depth.

The cove has a boulder and gravel bottom stepping down to reef structure at 90 feet, and that shoreline and reef make up a rocky reef biome. A stand of bull kelp thickens over the reef through the summer, adding a kelp forest biome that seasonally makes the jade harder to find.

Freedivers, spearfishermen, and rockhounds all use the cove. Rip currents pull hard, rogue waves inundate the shoreline in some weather, and the trail down is a steep switchback with loose gravel and a rope-assisted rock scramble at the bottom. Parking is a free dirt pullout on Highway 1 with no attendant, and cell service is spotty. Jade Cove sits in the gap between Point Sur State Marine Reserve to the north and Piedras Blancas State Marine Reserve to the south, so no state MPA covers the water. Fishing and spearfishing are legal under standard California saltwater regulations, and jade collection is governed by the NOAA sanctuary rules above.