La Jolla Cove

La Jolla Cove is a small rocky cove on the La Jolla coast in San Diego, set into the sandstone bluff below Scripps Park. Its water sits inside the Matlahuayl State Marine Reserve, a 1.04-square-mile no-take marine protected area that took over the former San Diego-La Jolla Underwater Park Ecological Reserve, protected by the city since 1970. A California sea lion colony occupies the rocks at the cove, at Point La Jolla, and on Boomer Beach just to the south. Children's Pool sits a short walk south along Coast Boulevard.

Rock and boulder line the cove walls, and that bare substrate along the edges and shallows is a rocky reef biome. A kelp forest biome begins within a short swim past the cove mouth, where giant kelp anchors on the rocky bottom offshore and to the south and grows up through the water column to the surface. Between the cove and La Jolla Shores, eelgrass covers the sand bottom as a seagrass biome, broad enough that divers working north from the cove cross it. The head of the southern branch of La Jolla Submarine Canyon lies further offshore, and while divers reach it from here, it is more strongly a feature of the San Diego-La Jolla Underwater Park as a whole than of the cove itself.

Decades of no-take protection have produced unusually dense and approachable fish populations, and snorkeling, scuba, and wildlife viewing draw nearly all the use here. Freediving for observation is not restricted by the take rules. Surfing is uncommon because the cove is sheltered. Visibility usually runs 10 to 20 feet, reaches 30 feet or more on the best summer and fall days, and can drop to 5 feet during plankton blooms or after rain.

Parking is the hard part. Free street parking on Coast Boulevard fills before 9 a.m.; the streets have no meters, only posted time limits, and walking a block or two inland often opens up longer ones. Take of all living marine resources is prohibited inside the Matlahuayl State Marine Reserve under California Code of Regulations Title 14, Section 632.