Pearl Bay is an open, 9 km wide, north-east facing bay. Its shoreline is dominated by sandy beaches, separated by small, rocky heads in the south, while extending inland for up to 3 km and rising to 100 m are massive, now vegetated, nested, parabolic dune systems. These dunes were probably emplaced during the Holocene sea level rise and stillstand between 8000 and 5000 years ago. While the dunes extend inland from the main beach, dunes from Port Clinton Beach have in the past cascaded down onto the three southern beaches, and their scarped, 100 m high, densely vegetated slopes now back the beaches. The three beaches are separated by small, rocky headlands. The dune groundwater drains out across the beaches in places, providing a source of clean fresh water. The main Pearl Bay Beach (1319) is 5.1 km long, faces east-south-east and receives waves averaging 0.5 m. These produce a low to moderate gradient high tide beach and a 150 m wide intertidal to low tide bar. The waves can commonly exceed 1 m, up to 2 m, which results in rips cutting across the low tide bar every 200 m, with up to 12 rips commonly present along the northern half of the beach. Wave height lowers along the southern half and rips are usually absent. read more

Beach Length: 5.1km