Fisk Mill Cove

Fisk Mill Cove is a long, indented cove at the north end of Salt Point State Park, marked at its northern head by Sentinel Rock, a sea stack with a wooden viewing deck reached from the north parking pullout. The bottom is a shallow rocky shelf between 10 and 20 feet before dropping into a boulder field with steep-sided pinnacles, underwater caves, and arches. A large bull-kelp bed sits offshore.

The cove takes its name from the Fisk lumber mill, which operated here between 1868 and 1874 as a doghole port where schooners moored inside the cove and loaded redwood off the bluff. Before the statewide abalone fishery closure in 2018, the cove was long one of the best-known dive sites in Salt Point State Park.

The offshore bed is a kelp forest biome, with bull kelp anchored on the rocky bottom and growing up through the water column to the surface in season. Palm kelp and scattered boulders cover the shallow shelf inside the cove, making that section a rocky reef biome. Pinnacles, underwater caves, and arches on the outer reef form a canyon biome.

Diving here is observation only. Two parking areas serve the cove: a paved lot at Highway 1 milepost SON 42.63 and a dirt pullout at SON 43.06, both charging the Salt Point State Park day-use fee of $8 per vehicle. Restrooms and picnic tables sit at the parking areas, and drinking water is currently shut off. The Stewarts Point State Marine Reserve boundary line runs at 38°35.600'N, between the two lots, so the main dive water sits inside the SMR where take of any living, geological, or cultural marine resource is prohibited.