Pacific Ocean Beaches

The largest ocean produces the widest range of beach in the register, organised less by latitude than by which side of it you are on. The eastern rim — the Americas — is cold almost everywhere, because the California and Humboldt currents run along it; beaches from British Columbia to Chile share water temperatures that surprise people who expect a Pacific to be warm. The western and central Pacific is the opposite: warm, reef-fringed and organised around lagoons, from French Polynesia to the Philippines. Between them lie the volcanic archipelagos — Hawaii, the Galápagos — where the beach material is as young as the island and can be black, green or red. Swell travels enormous distances across this ocean unimpeded, which is why its northern and southern shores have the surf and its lagoons do not. Two hazards recur along its eastern rim and are worth stating: sneaker waves on the north-west American coast, which run far higher than the waves before them, and drifting logs in the surf, which have killed people. On the western rim, the typhoon season runs roughly June to December.

They spread across fifteen beach worlds, the largest group being six atoll and lagoon beaches. Together they account for 46 km of shore. · computed from the 32 records below