What Makes a Great Beach in SoCal?

When I first moved to Orange County, I searched for the best beach for swimming, surfing, and boogie boarding. Laguna Beach is continuously noted as the best beach in California. Even the OC Register saves the number 1 spot for Laguna, but after 9 months of living in California and travelling from north to south, I just can't figure it out.

Sure Laguna Beach is home of the Festival of Arts and the Pageant of the Masters, making it popular with artists, and those art shops and summer festivals can be found near the beaches. It also offers basketball and volleyball, which not only has perks for athletes. I mean, who doesn't like watching competitive athletes, in great shape, diving around in the sand? With a playground for kids, a shower, bathrooms and sand pits, it is family friendly. Based on those criteria, Laguna beach seems to have it all, until you actually try to get near the water.



The beach is constantly over crowded and finding parking can be flat out impossible, and that's just the tip of the seaweed. With the waters warming up for summer, kelp and seaweed is drying up and washing ashore, and that attracts swarms of flies! If kelp, seaweed, and flies aren't enough to keep you from going for a swim in the Pacific, the number of sand sharks may be the last straw. Kelp beds, which are obviously in abundance in Laguna, are a great nutrient for sea live and communities. That's a good thing right? Well, not when you desperately fear sharks, even the non-human-attacking ones. With five unprovoked shark attacks along the Pacific last year, any fin in the water is a little unnerving.

While swimming at Laguna Beach just two weeks ago, I encountered 5 sand sharks and at least 6 other people had the same experience. I was too bothered by the encounter not to ask a lifeguard. Who better to know what is really going on out there? My obvious "here's your sign" question, after seeing them with my own eyes, was, "Are there any sharks out there?" To which he replied, "Hundreds, but they're harmless." After prying a little more, he told me about a pack of about 40 leopard sharks at the cove just north of the main beach. As he spoke about snorkeling around with these 5 foot sharks, his tone was casual and calm.

Maybe it's my "girly" side or my fear of sharks, but I'd prefer a beach like Newport where the kelp and seaweed is less prominent and the sharks seem to be better at hide-and-seek.