Fitzgerald Marine Reserve
Moss Beach / San Mateo Coast · near Moss Beach / Half Moon Bay · SF Bay Area
Tidepooling
At a glance
- Fee
- Free (county park); free lot fills fast on minus-tide weekends
- Season
- Year-round · winter afternoons & summer dawns for minus tides
What is here
- Species
- Harbor seals hauled out · Ochre sea stars · Giant green anemones · Nudibranchs & chitons
- Highlights
- The Main Reef · Seal Cove
Worth knowing
- Good for a first timer
- Yes
- Gear
- Grippy closed-toe shoes that can get wet · Tide chart — arrive 1 hr before low · Layers; the reef is windy and cold · No dogs; leave buckets at home — no collecting
Tidepooling detail
- Nickname
- The Bay Area's Flagship Tidepools
- Pool type
- reef-shelf
- Program
- docent-program
- Mpa
- Montara State Marine Reserve — full no-take
- Best tide
- Reef exposed ~1 hr either side of low; best below 0.0 ft
- Docent note
- Volunteer naturalists on the reef at good low tides; groups 15+ reserve ahead
- Intl tip
- The Bay Area's best tidepools, 30-40 min from San Francisco. Free entry, docents at good low tides, full no-take reserve. Time your visit to a minus tide (winter afternoons, summer dawns) — at high tide there is nothing to see. Pair with the Moss Beach Distillery bluff or Mavericks at Pillar Point just south.
- Directions note
- Free lot at California Ave & North Lake St — fills fast on minus-tide weekends
The guide
Fitzgerald Marine Reserve at Moss Beach is the Bay Area's flagship tidepool destination — a sprawling flat reef shelf that emer…
In the Guidebook
Everything above is yours for free. The written guide to Fitzgerald Marine Reserve — what it is actually like, and what we would tell a friend before they went — comes with the Guidebook.
Getting there
- Coordinates
- 37.5236, -122.5168