How often each sampling point along Dana Point's shore comes back over a state bacteria standard — from the state's own lab archive, spot by spot, with the season it happens in.
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Dana Point's beaches are not one beach. The state's laboratory has taken tens of thousands of ocean-water samples along this shore, and the record they make is very uneven: some sampling points here have gone over a state bacteria standard once in five years, and others go over roughly one visit in four. The difference is almost always a creek or a storm drain, and often it is a few hundred yards of sand.
This page reads that record live from the State Water Resources Control Board's own open data and lays it out point by point. It cannot tell you about the water today — the county does that, and its line is below.
35 sampling spots · 7,791 sampling visits since 2021
Most recent sample in the archive: February 25, 2026. The state's archive runs about 5 months behind. It is a record, not a reading of the water today.
0.00 in of rain over the past 72 hours at Dana Point.
Orange County Environmental Health's standing advice is not about a fixed number of hours: bacteria levels rise sharply in ocean and bay water next to storm drains, creeks and rivers, so swimmers should stay out of coastal water affected by a discharging drain, creek or river, and everyone should avoid contact with runoff on the sand — in wet weather and in dry. The point-by-point table below is the same advice written as numbers: the creek-mouth points are the ones that go over, and the surf a few thousand feet away mostly does not.
How often each sampling point came back over at least one of California’s single-sample standards. Two points on the same beach can read very differently — the numbers below are per point, not per beach.
| Sampling point | Visits | Over standard | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| North Beach - Downcoast | 61 | 34 | Often overabout 1 visit in 2 · 56% |
| North Beach - Upcoast | 59 | 30 | Often overabout 1 visit in 2 · 51% |
| Baby Beach — the swim areaThe harbour's sheltered beach, and the one small children swim at. Enclosed water flushes slowly, which is what these numbers are about. | 265 | 33 | Sometimes overabout 1 visit in 8 · 12% |
| Baby Beach — west end | 260 | 30 | Sometimes overabout 1 visit in 9 · 12% |
| Baby Beach — the buoy line | 252 | 21 |
| Sampling point | Visits | Over standard | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doheny — San Juan Creek mouth, downcoast sideThe same creek outlet, sampled on the downcoast side. A shorter record than the main point. | 136 | 57 | Often overabout 1 visit in 2 · 42% |
| Doheny — San Juan Creek mouth, upcoast sideThe same creek outlet, sampled on the upcoast side. | 136 | 42 | Often overabout 1 visit in 3 · 31% |
| Doheny — the San Juan Creek mouthWhere the creek runs out across the sand — the longest-running of the three points at this outlet, and the reason Doheny's water has the reputation it does. The two shorter records either side of it read higher still. | 286 | 79 | Often overabout 1 visit in 4 · 28% |
| Doheny — North Beach | 276 | 58 |
| Sampling point | Visits | Over standard | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salt Creek outlet, Monarch BeachThe creek outlet itself, not the surf beach of the same name. The two read nothing like each other. | 267 | 62 | Often overabout 1 visit in 4 · 23% |
| Salt Creek outlet, downcoast side | 263 | 13 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 20 · 4.9% |
| Monarch Beach — north end | 259 | 6 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 43 · 2.3% |
| Sampling point | Visits | Over standard | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capistrano Bay community beach | 128 | 4 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 32 · 3.1% |
| Capistrano Bay — 7,500 ft south of the outfall | 209 | 1 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 209 · 0.5% |
| Capistrano Bay — 10,000 ft south of the outfall | 217 | 1 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 217 · 0.5% |
| Sampling point | Visits | Over standard | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capistrano Beach — 5,000 ft south of the outfall | 212 | 4 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 53 · 1.9% |
| CSBMP1Z | 83 | 0 | Rarely overnever in this window |
| Sampling point | Visits | Over standard | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dana Strands | 233 | 2 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 117 · 0.9% |
| Salt Creek BeachThe surf beach below the headland. One visit over a standard in five years — the longest clean record on this shore. | 232 | 1 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 232 · 0.4% |
| MSI Beach | 231 | 0 | Rarely overnever in this window |
“Rarely” is under 5.0% of visits, “sometimes” under 15%, “often” at or above 15%. Those bands are ours, for reading the table at a glance; the counts beside them are the state’s.
Pooled across every sampling point, February is the month that goes over most often (17% of visits) and July the least (2.2%). That gap is the wet season, and it is why the rain reading above matters more than the yearly average.
| Month | Visits | Over standard | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 719 | 114 | 16% |
| February | 656 | 112 | 17% |
| March | 603 | 83 | 14% |
| April | 699 | 76 | 11% |
| May | 678 | 40 | 5.9% |
| June | 696 | 34 | 4.9% |
| July | 581 | 13 | 2.2% |
| August | 674 | 37 | 5.5% |
| September | 670 | 26 | 3.9% |
| October | 591 | 31 | 5.2% |
| November | 625 | 66 | 11% |
| December | 622 | 71 | 11% |
This is the record, not today’s water
OC Beachinfo — today's warnings and closures
Orange County Health Care Agency's own page. It is the only thing that says whether a beach is posted right now; it updates when a status changes.
OC ocean-water recorded information line
The same postings by phone, if the page is awkward on your handset.
Report a sewage spill — business hours
Orange County Environmental Health, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm.
California sets single-sample limits for ocean water in Title 17 of the state code: 104 CFU/100 mL of enterococcus, 400 of fecal coliform, 10,000 of total coliform. A sampling visit counts as over when any one of the three was exceeded. A fourth rule — total coliform above 1,000 when the fecal-to-total ratio is high — needs both values from one sample and is not applied here, so these rates sit at or below the county’s own posting rate, never above it.
San Juan Creek comes out at the north end of Doheny and Salt Creek comes out at Monarch Beach. In the record above, the sampling points at those two outlets are among the highest-reading in town, and the surf points a few thousand feet away from them are among the lowest. That is the shape of the problem here — it is a creek-mouth and drain problem, not a coastline problem.
Doheny's persistent bacteria readings are why the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board adopted a Total Maximum Daily Load — a formal clean-up target — for the beaches and creeks in this watershed. The regional board's own pages carry the plan and its progress reports.
The county health agency takes the samples; the State Water Resources Control Board publishes every one of them as open data. This page runs its own arithmetic over that archive — how many sampling visits, how many went over a standard — and shows the counts beside every rate so you can check the working.
Archive read .
Data: California State Water Resources Control Board, Beach Watch (data.ca.gov, ODC-BY) — data.ca.gov. Rainfall: Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0).
| Sometimes overabout 1 visit in 12 · 8.3% |
| Baby Beach — east end | 252 | 19 | Sometimes overabout 1 visit in 13 · 7.5% |
| Harbour — M dock, east basin | 242 | 16 | Sometimes overabout 1 visit in 15 · 6.6% |
| Harbour — Pilgrim dock | 242 | 10 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 24 · 4.1% |
| Harbour — Harbor Patrol dock | 236 | 6 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 39 · 2.5% |
| Harbour — the pier | 236 | 5 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 47 · 2.1% |
| Harbour — youth dock | 234 | 3 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 78 · 1.3% |
| Harbour — guest dock | 233 | 2 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 117 · 0.9% |
| Harbour — the fuel dock | 232 | 1 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 232 · 0.4% |
| Doheny — surf zone at the outfallThe surf directly off the outfall, at the creek end of the park. | 265 | 38 | Sometimes overabout 1 visit in 7 · 14% |
| Doheny — just north of San Juan Creek | 262 | 34 | Sometimes overabout 1 visit in 8 · 13% |
| Doheny — 1,000 ft south of the outfall | 262 | 21 | Sometimes overabout 1 visit in 12 · 8.0% |
| Doheny — 2,000 ft south of the outfall | 259 | 19 | Sometimes overabout 1 visit in 14 · 7.3% |
| Doheny — south day-use area drain | 257 | 14 | Sometimes overabout 1 visit in 18 · 5.4% |
| Doheny — the far end of the park | 257 | 11 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 23 · 4.3% |
| Doheny — 3,000 ft south of the outfallThe same beach as the creek mouth, a walk down the sand. It reads several times cleaner. If you are choosing where to put the towel, this is the number that matters. | 257 | 11 | Rarely overabout 1 visit in 23 · 4.3% |
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