Haskell's Beach · Tarline

Conditions over time

Live observations

Jul 18, 1:10 PM anon Waterline Patchy 11-50% – Hard – C

Jul 18, 12:42 PM anon Waterline Sporadic 1-10% Plate Hard None C

Jul 18, 11:32 AM anon Waterline Sporadic 1-10% – Firm – C

Jul 18, 10:22 AM leadbetter_lee Wrack line Sporadic 1-10% Pea Sticky None B

Jul 18, 6:40 AM beach_biologist Dry sand Sporadic 1-10% Pea Hard Tar balls C

Jul 18, 6:37 AM anon Waterline Trace <1% Coin Hard – B

Jul 18, 6:17 AM anon Waterline Trace <1% – Liquid – C

Jul 17, 6:44 PM anon Wrack line Sporadic 1-10% Coin Firm Sheen B

Jul 17, 5:46 PM channelkeeper_chris Wrack line Trace <1% – Liquid None B

Jul 17, 4:41 PM UCSB COPR Lab ★ Waterline Trace <1% Coin Sticky Sheen A

Jul 17, 4:33 PM anon Wrack line Trace <1% Coin Liquid – B

Jul 17, 4:23 PM anon Dry sand Trace <1% Coin Liquid None C

Jul 17, 1:30 PM anon Rocks Trace <1% Coin Firm None C

Jul 17, 1:04 PM anon Waterline Trace <1% Coin Liquid None B

Jul 17, 12:59 PM dr_moreno Waterline Trace <1% Coin Firm None A

Jul 17, 9:29 AM carp_surfer Waterline Trace <1% Coin Sticky – B

Jul 17, 9:02 AM anon Dry sand Trace <1% Coin Firm Sheen C

Jul 16, 6:28 PM SB Channelkeeper Volunteers ★ Dry sand Sporadic 1-10% Pea Firm Tar balls A

Jul 16, 5:55 PM copr_intern Rocks Trace <1% Coin Sticky None A

Jul 16, 2:51 PM channelkeeper_dana Waterline Trace <1% Coin Firm None B

16-day forecast

Sat, 7/18 PM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 15.3s 11.2kt onshore Clear · 78°F 96%

Sun, 7/19 AM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 16.3s 11.7kt onshore Patchy Fog · 67°F 93%

Sun, 7/19 PM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 16.2s 12.2kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 64°F 93%

Mon, 7/20 AM 4.8ft · chest-to-head 4.8ft @ 16.7s 11.5kt onshore Patchy Fog · 67°F 91%

Mon, 7/20 PM 4.6ft · chest-to-head 4.6ft @ 16.2s 12.7kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 71°F 91%

Tue, 7/21 AM 4.7ft · chest-to-head 4.7ft @ 15.9s 12.8kt onshore Patchy Fog · 70°F 88%

Tue, 7/21 PM 4.3ft · chest-to-head 4.3ft @ 16s 12.9kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 66°F 88%

Wed, 7/22 AM 4.4ft · chest-to-head 4.4ft @ 15.7s 11.2kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 67°F 86%

Wed, 7/22 PM 3.5ft · chest-to-head 3.5ft @ 14.9s 11.3kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 71°F 86%

Thu, 7/23 AM 3ft · chest-to-head 3ft @ 14.2s 13kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 67°F 83%

Thu, 7/23 PM 3ft · chest-to-head 3ft @ 13.8s 12.4kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 70°F 83%

Fri, 7/24 AM 2.8ft · waist-high 2.8ft @ 12.9s 11.5kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 66°F 81%

Fri, 7/24 PM 2.5ft · waist-high 2.5ft @ 13s 12.5kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 67°F 81%

Sat, 7/25 AM 2ft · waist-high 2ft @ 12s 12.5kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 66°F 78%

Sat, 7/25 PM 2.2ft · waist-high 2.2ft @ 13s 12.7kt onshore – 78%

Sun, 7/26 AM 2ft · waist-high 2ft @ 13s 12.1kt onshore – 76%

Sun, 7/26 PM 2.3ft · waist-high 2.3ft @ 13.3s 11.6kt onshore – 76%

Mon, 7/27 AM 2ft · waist-high 2ft @ 13.5s 11.3kt onshore – 73%

Mon, 7/27 PM 2.2ft · waist-high 2.2ft @ 13.7s 12.1kt onshore – 73%

Tue, 7/28 AM 2.6ft · waist-high 2.6ft @ 14.7s 12.4kt onshore – 71%

Tue, 7/28 PM 2.4ft · waist-high 2.4ft @ 15.4s 12.2kt onshore – 71%

Wed, 7/29 AM 2.7ft · waist-high 2.7ft @ 15.9s 12.7kt onshore – 68%

Wed, 7/29 PM 3.3ft · chest-to-head 3.3ft @ 16.1s 12.3kt onshore – 68%

Thu, 7/30 AM 4ft · chest-to-head 4ft @ 16.7s 12.6kt onshore – 66%

Thu, 7/30 PM 3.7ft · chest-to-head 3.7ft @ 17s 12.6kt onshore – 66%

Fri, 7/31 AM 4.3ft · chest-to-head 4.3ft @ 16.6s 12.6kt onshore – 63%

Fri, 7/31 PM 4.7ft · chest-to-head 4.7ft @ 15.9s 12.3kt onshore – 63%

Sat, 8/1 AM 4.5ft · chest-to-head 4.5ft @ 15s 11.6kt onshore – 61%

Sat, 8/1 PM 4.6ft · chest-to-head 4.6ft @ 14.9s 12.5kt onshore – 61%

Sun, 8/2 AM 4.6ft · chest-to-head 4.6ft @ 14.7s 13.1kt onshore – 58%

Sun, 8/2 PM 4.7ft · chest-to-head 4.7ft @ 13.9s 11.7kt onshore – 58%

Mon, 8/3 AM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 13s 12.6kt onshore – 58%

Mon, 8/3 PM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 12.5s 12.2kt onshore – 58%

Confidence is an estimate based on forecast lead time.

Nearby buoys

NDBC 46054 just now

Wave ht –

Period –

Water temp 59.2°F

Station 46054 on NDBC →

History

The old Ellwood piers

Haskell’s Beach sits at the foot of the Bacara resort, a half-mile of sand that reads today as pure Santa Barbara postcard — palm-lined bluffs, a surf break locals call “Ranch House,” dog walkers at dawn. A century ago the same stretch of coast looked more like an offshore refinery. This was Ellwood.

The Ellwood field was discovered in July 1928, when the Barnsdall Oil and Rio Grande Oil companies sank wells along the mesa above the beach and, when the onshore field kept producing, simply kept going out over the water. Wooden piers on creosoted pilings marched into the surf, each one lined with derricks pumping crude a few hundred feet offshore — a improvised, low-tech answer to what would later become the platform-and-pipeline oil industry up and down this coast. By the 1930s Ellwood was one of the most productive fields in California, and the beach below it was, functionally, an industrial yard.

Ellwood’s other claim on the history books came on the night of February 23, 1942, ten weeks after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese submarine I-17 surfaced offshore and fired roughly fifteen rounds from its deck gun at the Ellwood oil field, aiming for the wells and a pier storage tank. Damage was minor — one derrick and a pump house — but the psychological effect was not: it was the first shelling of the U.S. mainland in the war, and it helped convince a jittery West Coast that the war had arrived on its own shoreline. A state historical marker on the bluff above Haskell’s still notes the spot.

The Ellwood field wound down over the following decades, and the piers themselves are long gone — storm-broken, dismantled, or left to rot into the surf. The Bacara Resort opened on the mesa in 2000, built over reclaimed oil-lease land, and “Haskell’s” now belongs more to surfers than roughnecks. But the seafloor offshore still remembers: this is the eastern edge of the Coal Oil Point seep field, one of the most active natural oil seeps on Earth, sitting practically underneath the old Ellwood leases. Natural seep oil, weathered well residue, and decades of buried pier debris all feed the same longshore drift that deposits tar on this sand today — hard to fully separate “the seeps” from “the infrastructure built on top of them,” which is exactly the attribution problem this site’s crowd reports exist to help untangle.