Saltwater State Park
Des Moines · Central Sound · Washington
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Updated 11:15 PM PT today · September 11, 2026Dawn is the clearest window. A late-morning onshore builds surface chop and gives up a few feet by the afternoon.
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Map · getting there
47.374° N · 122.325° W
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Open in Apple MapsAbout Saltwater State Park
Saltwater State Park sits at 25205 8th Place S in Des Moines, its sandy beach entry positioned inside a WDFW-designated marine preserve. The reef complex offshore is built as 3 parallel artificial structures of boulders and concrete pipes. A surface swim of roughly 300 yards brings divers to a buoy marking a sunken wreck, and from there the descent runs to about 25 feet with the bottom dropping to 80 or 90 feet. East-west and north-south rope lines connect the 3 structures for navigation between them.
The Saltwater State Park Marine Preserve is one of Washington's designated no-take underwater parks, an envelope of 10.61 acres set aside for research and non-consumptive use. WDFW closes the full envelope to recreational and commercial harvest across every category the department manages: salmon, trout, bottomfish, shellfish, forage fish, and unclassified species. The preserve overlays the dive site completely, so no legal harvest happens on the reef structures at any depth.
The 3 reef lines carry the rocky reef biome here, and the sand approach and adjacent shallows put a seagrass biome inside the preserve envelope as well. Scuba divers with advanced certification are the intended audience given the depth profile and the potential for strong currents through the 30-to-100-foot range. Documented residents inside the preserve include giant Pacific octopus and wolf eels among the reef structures, with plumose anemones covering the concrete pipes; rockfish and lingcod are also documented here. The long open-water surface swim also exposes divers to Des Moines boat traffic and calls for careful surface navigation.
A Washington State Discover Pass or a $10 day-use fee gets vehicles into the park's large paved lots, with restrooms and showers close to the beach. All species are closed to harvest within the Saltwater State Park Marine Preserve and the closure is enforced by WDFW; the Washington Department of Health additionally advises that clams, oysters, and mussels from this beach are not fit for human consumption at any time.
Rocky Reef
The rocky reef biome is bare rock, boulder, and cobble structure without a kelp canopy above it. The hard relief and its crevices shelter invertebrates and reef fish, and the structure concentrates life that the surrounding sand cannot hold. Learn more about this biome and the species found in it by clicking the link below.
Learn more in the Biome Glossary
Seagrass Bed
The seagrass biome is sandy bottom carpeted with eelgrass or surfgrass. The blades shelter juvenile fish and invertebrates and stabilize the sediment against the current. Learn more about this biome and the species found in it by clicking the link below.
Learn more in the Biome GlossarySnorkel Species Report
Nearby beaches
Kelp Forest
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