Mission Beach

Mission Beach is the narrow sand peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and Mission Bay, two blocks wide and just under two miles long. A boardwalk runs the full length of the oceanfront, and Mission Boulevard runs the spine of the peninsula as the main north-south artery. At the center sits Belmont Park, an amusement complex at 3146 Mission Boulevard built around the Giant Dipper, a wooden roller coaster that has operated on this site since 1925. South Mission Beach tapers to the harbor entrance jetty that separates Mission Bay from the open ocean.

The bottom is sand from one end of the peninsula to the other, with breaking surf and no rocky reef or kelp anywhere offshore. The combination of sand and open breakers makes this a surf zone biome.

Surfing and swimming carry almost all the use, with hook-and-line surf fishing common along the sand at a smaller scale. The absence of rock or kelp leaves nothing to hold fish in close, so spearfishing, snorkeling, and scuba are all uncommon here.

Four free public lots serve the area around Belmont Park: the Ventura Place lot, the south Belmont lot, and two smaller lots. All of them fill before mid-morning on summer weekends, and the metered street parking on Mission Boulevard is competitive once the lots are full. Fishing and spearfishing are legal here under standard California regulations.