Beaches for
Sea turtles, dolphins, tropical birds, and more in their natural habitat.
About wildlife watching
Sea turtles, dolphins, tropical birds, and more in their natural habitat.
26 beaches found
Camusdarach Beach is the curving white shell-sand crescent near Morar where the 1983 film Local Hero was shot, a five-minute dune walk from a small B8008 car park that goes pay-and-display in 2026, with views to Eigg and Rum and no facilities at all.
Monterey's quiet bay-side beach, named after an 1880 Gilded Age hotel that is now the Naval Postgraduate School. The cold-water walking beach that almost every travel guide wrongly sells as a swimming beach.
The Zakynthos southeast tip beach where loggerhead sea turtles nest from May through October, protected by the strictest marine-park rules in Greece: 5-metre waterline limit, no umbrellas, sunset closure, and rangers who enforce them. Visit for the conservation experience, not for sunbeds.
Hayle Beach is the town-end of a three-mile sand-and-dune sweep along St Ives Bay, where the right move depends on which Towans you pick, where you park (Harveys from about £1.20/hr, Gwithian £3/hr), the dog rules by season, and the estuary current you keep clear of.
The Kona coast beach inside Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park, with a sea turtle haul-out zone, two ancient Hawaiian fishponds engineered 600 years ago, petroglyphs, and a short walk from the harbor that filters out the rental-car convoy.
The Big Island south Kona black-sand beach in a still-active Hawaiian fishing village, with calm summer snorkelling, regular spinner dolphin pods, community-run camping, and a concession stand staffed by the village families that protect the bay.
The half-mile cobblestone beach in Machiasport that is not actually made of jasper, sits in frigid Down East Maine water, and makes a low rumbling sound as waves drag stones back into the sea.
The West Maui beach most travel articles still call Airport Beach, named for the small Kaanapali airstrip that closed in 1986. Free parking, a reef off the sand, sea turtles in the lagoon, and underwater humpback whale song from December through March. Easier than Kaanapali next door.
A mile of soft North Shore sand with a shorebreak that has killed people who never intended to swim, and a calm summer version that looks like a different beach entirely.
The reddish-sand beach two minutes south of Hana on Maui's east shore, with cone-shaped Alau Island offshore and the Ka Iwi o Pele cinder hill behind. Photograph it. Picnic on it. Do not swim in it.
The white-sand crescent in Kekaha Kai State Park north of Kailua-Kona, with calm turquoise water in summer, dramatic lava rock cliffs at both ends, and the new 2026 non-resident fees that older travel guides do not mention.
The Kauai north-east shore half-moon bay where Gilligan's Island was filmed in 1963 and almost nobody has been since. Treacherous currents in the centre, calm at the ends, no lifeguard, no facilities, and limited parking on a residential road. Quiet on purpose.
The Vancouver Island hike-in beach 2 kilometres down the Juan de Fuca Trail from China Beach, with a waterfall that drops directly onto the sand, a sea cave accessible at low tide, a rope swing, and the most photographed pocket-cove on the Pacific west coast of Canada.
The West Maui snorkel beach at Mile Marker 14, with 450 acres of fringing coral reef, reliable Hawaiian green sea turtle sightings, occasional manta rays, and a tide-dependent entry that the rental-car blogs rarely warn about clearly.
Harbour Island's three-mile east-coast beach, where a microscopic organism called Homotrema rubrum actually does make the sand pale pink. What it costs, how you get there, and why midday does not show what Instagram promised.
A surreal beach hidden inside a collapsed volcanic crater on the Marietas Islands, accessible only by swimming through a tunnel at low tide. Strictly limited to 116 visitors per day.
The Guanacaste crescent that reopened its marina in 2023 after a 19-year closure, where the name has nothing to do with flamingos and the sand is not actually pink. What every 2020 guide still gets wrong about Costa Rica's north Pacific showpiece.
A 7,349-hectare wildlife refuge on Nicaragua's Pacific coast where up to 50,000 olive ridley sea turtles can arrive to nest in a single night, on a beach that makes no promises about which night.
The engineered bay beach the Aransas County Navigation District built in 1935, where calm green water, 65 covered picnic sites, and Texas's first Blue Wave certification make it a useful corrective to open Gulf chaos.
The Kauai west-shore family beach named for the active Hawaiian salt-making ponds beside it. A reef-protected crescent that swims like a pool, lifeguards on duty, and one of the few beaches in the state where Hawaiian sea salt is still harvested by hand.
The Kauai south-shore beach with the 40-foot cliff Harrison Ford jumped off in Six Days Seven Nights. The cliff is the photo, not the activity. The real reason to come is the Maha'ulepu Heritage Trail that starts behind the sand.
The bay-side Orleans beach where a 9-foot tide swing turns one patch of sand into four different beaches a day, and where the Cape Cod Chamber ranks the sunset second-best on the whole Cape.
Southport Beach has one of England's most dramatic tides, with the sea over a kilometre out at low water. Why it's like that, the safety reality, the pier and Lord Street, and where to actually swim nearby.
A hidden cove near Dunedin reached through a hand-carved tunnel in the sandstone cliffs, with dramatic rock formations and wild Southern Ocean coastline.
The Kauai snorkel beach where most visitors arrive with a map that is wrong, a reservation they did not need, and a parking plan that stopped working in 2022. Get those three things right and it is still one of the most unusual reef systems in Hawaii.
St Pete Beach's erosion-prone north end, defined by four rock T-groins and the $125M county renourishment that wrapped in March 2026 after Helene and Milton flattened the dune line. What actually opened, what is wider, and what to expect in April 2026.
