Monterey Bay is one of America's most spectacular coastal areas — dramatic cliffs, kelp forests, sea otters, and the famous 17-Mile Drive. It's a scenic destination more than a swimming destination; the cold Pacific water (typically 50–58°F) limits most swimming to wetsuits.
Monterey Bay is a large bay on California's central coast, surrounded by the Santa Lucia Mountains. Cold upwelling water from the deep Monterey Canyon keeps water temperatures cool year-round. The bay is a protected marine sanctuary.
No Atlantic sargassum. Monterey's cold water supports one of the world's most spectacular kelp forests — visible from glass-bottom boats and when snorkeling or diving in a wetsuit. Native kelp washing ashore is completely natural.
Monterey was California's capital under both Spanish and Mexican rule, and its harbor was the most important port on the California coast for the first century of European settlement — Richard Henry Dana immortalized it in 'Two Years Before the Mast' (1840), the first great American maritime memoir. The sardine industry that once filled Cannery Row was one of the largest in the world — at its 1940s peak, Monterey packed 250,000 tons of sardines per year until the fishery catastrophically collapsed in the 1950s, the canneries falling silent almost overnight. Robert Louis Stevenson visited Monterey in 1879, and John Steinbeck set 'Cannery Row' and 'East of Eden' in the region — the fog-wrapped coastline has inspired more American literature per mile than perhaps any other stretch of Pacific shore.
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