172 Fun Facts About Beach

Geologically, a beach is a landform beside a body of water made up of what?

Loose particles, from fine sand to pebbles and broken shell, make up every beach, which is why beaches range from powdery white to cobbled grey.

Which crustacean digs deep burrows just above the tide line on open sandy beaches?

Ghost crabs are pale, sand-coloured and mostly active at night, so they seem to vanish as they dart between their burrows; older crabs may dig in as far as 400 m from the sea.

Which natural warning sign means a tsunami may be only minutes away?

The sea draining far offshore can be the trough of a tsunami arriving first. On a Phuket beach in 2004, ten-year-old Tilly Smith remembered a geography lesson on tsunamis and got about 100 people to safety.

Which Brazilian beach, running over 200 km to the Uruguayan border, is often billed as the world's longest?

Praia do Cassino runs from the Rio Grande breakwaters to the Uruguayan border at Chuí; because of the coastline paradox, estimates of its length range from about 212 to 254 km, so the title stays disputed.

Which type of radiation from the Sun causes sunburn?

Ultraviolet rays reflect off sand and water, which adds to a beachgoer's dose, and a significant share still passes through cloud on an overcast day.

Which blue-blooded 'living fossil' crawls onto Delaware Bay beaches in huge numbers each year to lay its eggs?

Horseshoe crabs are closer kin to spiders and scorpions than to true crabs, and an extract of their copper-based blue blood is used to test injectable drugs for bacterial contamination.

Venice Beach, with its Muscle Beach gym and street performers, is a neighbourhood of which US city?

Los Angeles absorbed Venice in the mid-1920s; developer Abbot Kinney had founded it in 1905 as 'Venice of America', digging miles of canals and putting gondoliers on them.

Which landmark does Charlton Heston's astronaut find half-buried on a beach at the end of Planet of the Apes?

The Statue of Liberty reveals that the 'alien' planet was Earth all along; the scene was shot in a cove near Point Dume in Malibu, with a matte painting blended into the real cliffs.

Black sand beaches near volcanoes are built from tiny fragments of which dark rock, shattered when lava meets the sea?

A big lava flow hitting the ocean can build a brand-new black sand beach almost overnight. The lava shatters on contact with seawater into tiny fragments of basalt.

On a dark beach, newly hatched sea turtles find the ocean by crawling toward what?

The brightest horizon used to be the sea, lit by the moon and stars, so hatchlings headed for it; now lights from buildings and streets can draw them inland instead.

Which country boasts the longest coastline in the world?

Canada's coast fronts three oceans and winds around some 52,000 islands, which is how it outruns every other country; estimates run from about 202,000 to 265,000 km depending on the measuring scale.

What natural phenomenon causes some beaches to glow at night with a blue, ethereal light?

Bioluminescent plankton — dinoflagellates such as Noctiluca — flash blue when disturbed by a wave or a footstep, which is why the glow is strongest along the surf line.

Which mineral gives Hawaiʻi's Papakōlea Beach its green sand?

Olivine crystals wash out of the old volcanic cone behind Papakōlea; being denser than the ash around them, they stay on the beach while lighter grains are swept out to sea. Gem-quality olivine is peridot.

Cape Hatteras and most of the Outer Banks barrier islands belong to which US state?

North Carolina's Outer Banks were the last refuge of the pirate Blackbeard, who was killed in a battle at Ocracoke Inlet in 1718.

Which Californian beach is home to the Wedge, a famous bodysurfing shore break?

The Wedge sits at the tip of Newport Beach's Balboa Peninsula, where waves rebounding off the harbour jetty combine into steep peaks that can top 20 feet.

Which Sydney beach's surf lifesaving club is officially recognised by Surf Life Saving Australia as the first ever formed?

Bondi Beach bathers formed their club at the Royal Hotel in February 1907; Bronte claims an earlier start in 1903, but in 2005 a panel of Surf Life Saving Australia historians ruled for Bondi.

Which landscape architect designed Copacabana's black-and-white wave-pattern promenade?

Roberto Burle Marx kept the old Portuguese-style waves when the promenade was rebuilt around 1970; the pattern was first laid in a Lisbon square in the 19th century, long before it reached Rio.

The name Waikīkī means what in Hawaiian?

Waikīkī means 'spouting fresh water': springs and streams once fed wetlands that separated the beach from the interior, until the Ala Wai Canal drained them in the 1920s.

In the 1920s and 1930s, sand for eroding Waikīkī was shipped in from where?

Manhattan Beach, California, was levelling its dunes for building, so the Kuhn Brothers construction firm sold the spare sand to Hawaiian developers and shipped it across the Pacific over about ten years.

Which Queensland beach is famed for dazzling sand that is almost pure silica?

Whitehaven Beach's silica is not found in the local rock, so the sand is thought to have been carried in by ocean currents over millions of years; it also holds little heat, so it stays comfortable under bare feet.

Which New Zealand beach is officially designated a public highway?

Ninety Mile Beach is only about 55 miles (88 km) long; one story blames early travellers who took three days to cross it and reckoned on covering 30 miles a day.

Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh is named after an officer of which organisation?

Captain Hiram Cox of the British East India Company was made superintendent of the Palongkee outpost to resettle Arakanese refugees, and the market town took his name.

Beach volleyball most likely began in 1915 at which beachfront venue?

The Outrigger Canoe Club on Waikīkī is where members are said to have strung a net on the sand in 1915; the two-a-side game followed in 1930, when only four players had shown up for a six-a-side match in Santa Monica.

Beach volleyball has been an Olympic sport since which Games?

Atlanta 1996 put the Olympic debut on an inland site, Clayton County International Park, rather than a real coast; American Karch Kiraly won the men's event to add to his two indoor Olympic titles.

Louis Réard named his 1946 swimsuit the bikini after an atoll where what had happened four days earlier?

A nuclear bomb test at Bikini Atoll on 1 July 1946 gave Réard his name; rival Jacques Heim was already selling the 'world's smallest bathing suit', the Atome, so Réard advertised his as smaller still.

What was Louis Réard's profession before he introduced the bikini?

An automotive engineer by training, Réard was running his mother's lingerie shop in Paris; no fashion model would wear his design, so he hired Casino de Paris nude dancer Micheline Bernardini to show it.

Where did Sebastian Steudtner ride his Guinness-certified 26.2 m (86 ft) wave in 2020?

Nazaré, Portugal, owes its giants to an undersea canyon that funnels Atlantic swell toward Praia do Norte; Guinness ratified Steudtner's October 2020 ride as the largest wave ever surfed.

Surfing made its Olympic debut at which Games?

Tokyo 2020 staged surfing at Tsurigasaki Beach in Chiba, and organisers brought the finals forward to catch the swell from Tropical Storm Nepartak.

Which sunscreen brand is named after the Alpine peak where chemist Franz Greiter was reportedly sunburnt in 1938?

Piz Buin grew out of the Gletscher Crème, or Glacier Cream, that Greiter launched in 1946 after his climb; he went on to introduce the SPF rating used on sunscreen bottles.

'Red Vet Pet', an early sunscreen made for US troops in the Pacific in 1944, later became which brand?

Coppertone turned the red veterinary petrolatum into a marketable lotion, then sold it with its famous advert of a puppy tugging at a little girl's swimsuit to reveal her tan line.

Cannon Beach, Oregon, is named for a cannon that came from what?

A wrecked US Navy schooner, the USS Shark, broke up on the Columbia River bar in 1846; one of its cannons gave the town its name, and two more thought to be hers turned up near Arch Cape in 2008.

Oregon's Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach features in which 1985 adventure film?

The Goonies use the 235-foot sea stack to line up their treasure map; the rock is also a protected nesting site for tufted puffins.

The slow-motion beach run that opens Chariots of Fire was filmed on West Sands in which Scottish town?

St Andrews stood in for Broadstairs in Kent, where the scene is set; the runners splash along West Sands right beside the Old Course.

What is the recommended way to escape a rip current?

Swim parallel to shore, because a rip is a narrow channel: a short sideways swim takes you out of it, while fighting straight back against the flow only wears a swimmer out.

Besides ocean coasts, rip currents regularly endanger swimmers on which North American inland waters?

The Great Lakes are big enough for breaking waves, which is all a rip current needs; the flow can reach eight feet per second, faster than an Olympic swimmer.

On the geologists' size scale, a grain just too small to count as sand, under 1/16 mm across, becomes what?

Silt begins below 1/16 mm and gravel above 2 mm on the Udden–Wentworth scale, so 'sand' is a size, not a substance, whatever the grains are made of.

Which mineral is the most common constituent of sand outside the tropics?

Quartz dominates sand away from the tropics because it is hard and chemically inert, so it survives the weathering that breaks down most other minerals in the parent rock.

Why is desert sand, though plentiful, unsuitable for making concrete?

Even desert countries import sand for building. Desert sand fails in concrete because its grains are too round and smooth, polished by the wind, so they do not bind well.

Which two celestial bodies' gravitational pull primarily drives the tides?

The Sun's pull matters too, which is why tides swing highest when the Moon and the Sun line up. Most coasts see two high waters and two low waters a day.

Marina Beach, one of the world's longest urban beaches, is in which Indian city?

Chennai's Marina Beach is partly man-made: after the city's harbour was built, its breakwaters trapped sand moving along the coast, and the sea that once lapped Fort St George retreated behind a wide new beach.

What is the second most common type of sand on Earth made of?

Calcium carbonate sand, mostly aragonite, has been built over some 500 million years by living things such as coral and shellfish, which is why it dominates beaches near reefs.

Who sang the 1960 US number-one hit "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini"?

Brian Hyland was 16 when the song topped the Hot 100; in 2006 its co-writer Paul Vance saw his own obituary on TV after a man who had falsely claimed to have written it died.

Which Australian-founded brand's name became a generic term for men's brief-style swimsuits?

Speedo's costume nearly cost Australian Clare Dennis her 1932 Olympic title: a protest that it showed 'too much shoulder' was dismissed before she won the 200 m breaststroke.

Sunscreen appears on which organisation's List of Essential Medicines?

The WHO added broad-spectrum sunscreen to its Model List of Essential Medicines in 2025 to prevent skin cancer in people with albinism, who are at far higher risk of sun damage.

Fishermen at Huanchaco have ridden waves ashore for some 3,000 years on small boats made of what?

Reeds: the bundled totora craft are called caballitos, 'little horses', because riders straddle them, and some see surfing them home with the catch as one of the oldest forms of wave riding.

In beach volleyball, unlike the indoor game, how does a block count?

As a team touch: a block uses up one of the three touches on sand, so only two remain to get the ball back over, while indoors the block is free.

Who was player-manager of France's 2005 Beach Soccer World Cup winners?

Eric Cantona took up beach soccer through his brother Joël after leaving Manchester United in 1997; in the 2005 final in Rio, his France side beat Portugal in a penalty shootout.

Which sandcastle style needs no bucket or spade, only handfuls of very wet sand?

A drip castle is built by letting very wet sand fall from the fingers so it sets into organic spires; good sculpting sand is slightly dirty, with silt and clay locking the grains together.

What is the valley between two coastal sand dunes called?

A dune slack is the low trough between dune ridges; its soil is often waterlogged, so marsh plants and many of a dune system's rarer species grow there rather than on the dry sand above.

At what depth is the flow of a rip current strongest and fastest?

Next to the surface is where a rip runs fastest, because friction slows the flow near the bottom; contrary to the myth, a rip carries swimmers out to sea, not under the water.

The leathery 'mermaid's purses' that wash up on beaches are the egg cases of which animals?

Sharks and skates lay their young in these tough collagen capsules; once the pup has swum free, the empty case washes ashore, and the Shark Trust asks beachgoers to record their finds.

How does beach glass from freshwater shores usually differ from sea glass?

Sea glass is often used for jewellery.

Which creatures, along with bacteria, decompose driftwood at sea?

Gribbles (tiny isopods) and shipworms (wood-boring clams) tunnel through floating timber along with bacteria; driftwood that survives can shelter birds and fish and even anchor new sand dunes.

Coney Island lies in which New York City borough?

Coney Island is at the southern tip of Brooklyn; once a true island, it was joined to the rest of Long Island when Coney Island Creek was partly filled in the early 20th century.

The Promenade des Anglais, a seafront walk first paid for by English winter visitors, runs along which French Riviera city?

Nice got the walk after a harsh winter in 1820 drove beggars into town: English residents, led by the Reverend Lewis Way, paid them to build a path along the shore.

Which ruler made Waikīkī the first capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii after conquering Oʻahu in 1795?

Kamehameha I landed his army at Waikīkī and Waiʻalae and won Oʻahu at the Battle of Nuʻuanu; Waikīkī was his capital for about a year before the court moved on.

Copacabana was renamed after a chapel holding a replica statue of the patron saint of which country?

Bolivia's Copacabana is a town on Lake Titicaca, high in the Andes; Rio's district took the name from a chapel built for a copy of the town's statue of the Virgin.

Which Florida city's Art Deco district did Barbara Baer Capitman's campaign save from demolition?

Miami Beach's Art Deco district joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1979; Capitman and her supporters held candlelight vigils and stood in front of bulldozers to defend its hotels.

Dr Richard Russell's 1750s seawater cure helped turn which English fishing town into a resort?

Brighton, still officially Brighthelmstone until 1810, drew the sick to Russell's seawater cure; the doctor from nearby Lewes sent so many patients there that he moved to the town himself.

Blackpool's growth as a resort was tied to annual factory shutdowns in which industry?

Cotton mills across Lancashire shut for a week each summer, the wakes weeks; each town took a different week, so Blackpool had a steady stream of visitors from June to September.

Ipanema's name is usually said to come from Tupi words meaning roughly what?

Worthless water is one common reading of the Tupi, though others render it 'stinking lake'; the name first belonged to a river in São Paulo state and reached Rio through the Baron of Ipanema, who developed the district.

Which Philippine resort island was closed to tourists for six months in 2018?

Boracay was shut from April to October 2018 after President Duterte called it a 'cesspool'; its overloaded sewage system was rebuilt, and it reopened with new rules to curb tourist growth.

Maya Bay, setting of The Beach, is on which Thai island?

Ko Phi Phi Le is a ring of steep limestone hills around Maya Bay; the tourist rush after the film damaged its coral so badly that the bay was closed from 2018 until early 2022.

Whitehaven Beach was named in 1879 by a naval surveyor after a town in which English county?

Cumberland names run through the area because James Cook had called the whole island group the Cumberland Islands in 1770; surveyor E.P. Bedwell followed suit with Whitehaven, a town in that county.

Anse Source d'Argent, often called the world's most photographed beach, is on which Seychelles island?

La Digue's most famous beach lies inside L'Union Estate, an old coconut and vanilla plantation, so visitors pay the estate's entrance fee to reach its giant boulders.

Navagio, or Shipwreck Beach, is on which Greek island?

Zakynthos owes the beach's name to the coaster MV Panagiotis, which ran aground in the cove during a storm in 1980 and was abandoned on the sand.

Which hit Korean drama filmed a date scene for its soldier and surgeon leads at Navagio Beach?

Descendants of the Sun shot its overseas scenes in autumn 2015, with Navagio as the backdrop for the leads' date; a popular story holds that the wreck on the sand was a cigarette-smuggling ship.

Reynisfjara black sand beach lies near which Icelandic town?

Vík í Mýrdal, Iceland's southernmost village, sits beside Reynisfjara, where folklore says the sea stacks offshore are trolls caught by the dawn and turned to stone.

Keyhole Rock frames the winter sunset at Pfeiffer Beach in which California coastal region?

Big Sur's Pfeiffer Beach hides at the end of a narrow two-mile side road, yet photographers pack it on a few December and January evenings when the setting sun beams through the arch.

Which motorsport organisation is headquartered in Daytona Beach?

NASCAR was founded at Daytona Beach's Streamline Hotel in 1948 and keeps its headquarters there; cars raced on the hard-packed sand for decades before Daytona International Speedway opened in 1959.

Myrtle Beach sits at the centre of a 60-mile stretch of coast known as what?

The Grand Strand takes its name from 'strand', an old word for a beach: it is an unbroken arc of sand running some sixty miles through Horry and Georgetown counties.

Who coined the name Cape Cod in 1602?

Bartholomew Gosnold named Cape Cod in 1602 for the abundance of fish in its waters; in 1607 he helped found Jamestown, where he died of disease within months.

The seas off the Outer Banks are nicknamed what because of their many shipwrecks?

The Graveyard of the Atlantic lies where the cold Labrador Current meets the warm Gulf Stream off Cape Hatteras, above the ever-shifting sandbars of Diamond Shoals.

Baywatch was cancelled after one season on which network before syndication saved it?

NBC dropped Baywatch after one season, but star David Hasselhoff put up his own money to revive it for syndication in 1991, and it became one of the most-watched shows in the world.

The Beach, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is based on a 1996 novel by which author?

Alex Garland's novel became a 2000 film whose crew bulldozed and replanted the beach at Maya Bay to look more like paradise; Thailand's supreme court ruled in 2006 that the filming had harmed the environment.

The Beach Boys formed in 1961 in which California city?

Hawthorne is an inland Los Angeles suburb, and the band were no beach bums: by most accounts drummer Dennis Wilson was the only one who really surfed, and he suggested singing about it.

Jaws was shot mostly on location on which Massachusetts island?

Martha's Vineyard doubled as Amity Island; the mechanical sharks broke down there so often that Spielberg chose mostly to hint at the shark rather than show it.

Which wheeled wooden cabins were rolled into the sea so Georgian and Victorian visitors could change and enter the water unseen?

Bathing machines were hauled into the surf by horses, and some resorts employed 'dippers', strong attendants such as Brighton's Martha Gunn, to help nervous bathers in and out of the water.

Which 1953 film features Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr's famous kiss in the surf?

From Here to Eternity staged its embrace at Hālona Cove on Oʻahu, a pocket of sand that locals call Cockroach Cove; the film went on to win eight Oscars, including Best Picture.

Which country had the most Blue Flag beaches in the world in 2025?

Spain had more Blue Flag beaches than any other country in 2025; the flags are awarded for a year at a time, so every beach has to qualify again on water quality, safety and services.

Which is the largest of the seven living species of sea turtle?

The leatherback is named for the tough, rubbery skin that covers its back in place of a hard shell; it can top 1,000 pounds and has been recorded diving nearly 4,000 feet.

Sand dollars are a type of which animal?

Sand dollars are flattened, burrowing sea urchins; the name is said to come from their bleached, disc-shaped skeletons, which wash ashore looking like large silver coins.

Which small wader is known for sprinting after retreating waves like a clockwork toy?

The sanderling chases each retreating wave to snatch sand crabs and other prey before the next one breaks; unusually for a sandpiper, it has no hind toe.

Flip-flops may copy sandals American soldiers brought home after World War II from which country?

Japan's flat, thonged zōri are thought to be the model for the rubber flip-flop; one country's everyday word for the sandals, jandals, began as a trade name coined from 'Japanese sandals'.

Which toy company bought the Pluto Platter flying disc in 1957 and renamed it the Frisbee?

Wham-O chose the name after hearing that college students called the discs Frisbies, a word said to come from the Frisbie Pie Company, whose empty tins they had tossed around.

Which inventor created the Boogie Board in 1971?

Tom Morey, a jazz drummer as well as a surfboard shaper, named his 1971 foam board for his love of music; it let anyone ride a wave lying down, with no need to stand.

Which board sport starts on the beach by dropping the board onto the wash of previous waves?

Skimboarding took off at Laguna Beach, California, where the steep shore and close-breaking waves suit it; the town has hosted a skimboarding world championship since 1976.

The word "beachcombers" first appeared in print in which 1840 book?

Richard Henry Dana Jr. used 'beachcombers' in Two Years Before the Mast (1840) for Europeans scraping a living on South Pacific islands; Melville's Omoo later spread the term.

A rigid structure built perpendicular to the shore to trap sand moving along the coast is called what?

A groyne builds a wide beach on the side the sand arrives from but can starve the shore beyond it, which is why groynes are usually set out in rows.

Which coastal landform is a finger of sand joined to land at one end and often hooked at the tip?

A spit grows where the coastline turns a corner: waves keep carrying sand straight on into open water, and waves bending around the far end curl its tip into a hook.

A sandy isthmus tying an island to the mainland is called what?

A tombolo forms because the island shelters the water behind it: waves bend around both sides and drop their sand in the calm zone until the bar reaches the shore.

Though it resembles a jellyfish, the Portuguese man o' war is actually what?

A siphonophore is a floating colony of specialised clones; the man o' war cannot steer, drifting wherever wind and current push its float, and can still sting weeks after washing ashore.

Which Australian swimmer pioneered the women's one-piece bathing costume?

Annette Kellermann swam in a clinging one-piece when women were expected to bathe in dresses and pantaloons; she said she was once arrested for it on a Boston beach, and later sold her own swimsuit line.

Wetsuits are usually made from which foamed material?

A wetsuit floats and warms you for the same reason: gas bubbles in its foamed neoprene cut heat conduction and add buoyancy.

Which Berkeley physicist invented the wetsuit?

Hugh Bradner devised the wetsuit in the early 1950s for US Navy frogmen, but his patent bid failed and the Navy passed on it, leaving surf-shop founders such as Jack O'Neill to make it famous.

Which future Tarzan beat Duke Kahanamoku to the 1924 Olympic 100 m title?

Johnny Weissmuller ended Kahanamoku's run as champion: the winner in 1912 and 1920 had to settle for silver, with his own brother Sam Kahanamoku taking the bronze.

The name Gidget is a portmanteau of "girl" and what?

Gidget blends 'girl' and 'midget', the nickname surfers gave the tiny teenager; Frederick Kohner built his 1957 novel on the beach stories of his daughter Kathy.

Who directed the 1991 surf-heist film Point Break?

Kathryn Bigelow made Point Break while married to its executive producer, James Cameron; in 2010 she beat him, by then her ex-husband, to become the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar.

Which British D-Day beach lay immediately east of the American landings at Omaha?

Gold Beach took in Arromanches, where the British built a Mulberry artificial harbour; the American one off Omaha was wrecked by a storm, but Gold's went on landing supplies for ten months.

Which Dorset shingle beach gave its name to a 2007 novel by Ian McEwan?

Chesil Beach sorts its own pebbles, from pea-sized at the western end to about 5 cm near Portland; fishermen and smugglers landing at night are said to have known where they were by the stones.

Which Australian city is a major tourist base for trips to the Great Barrier Reef?

Cairns sends visitors out to the largest structure built by living organisms: a reef system about 2,300 km long, raised by countless tiny polyps.

What was Huntington Beach called immediately before it was renamed in 1903?

Pacific City took the name Huntington Beach in 1903 to win a stop on Henry E. Huntington's Pacific Electric Red Car line; the railroad magnate's company went on to develop the town.

The final scene of Point Break is set at which Australian surf beach?

Bells Beach is where Bodhi paddles out into a once-in-a-lifetime storm, but the scene was shot at Indian Beach in Oregon's Ecola State Park, half a world away from Victoria.

Surfer Mick Fanning fought off a shark at Jeffreys Bay in which country?

South Africa's Jeffreys Bay made world news when a shark tangled in Fanning's leash mid-final; he punched it, escaped unhurt, and came back to win the same event the following year.

Teahupoʻo, Tahiti's monster surf break, has a name loosely translated as what?

Teahupoʻo is loosely translated as 'to sever the head' or 'place of skulls', a name said to recall a battle fought in the village; in 2024 its wave hosted the Olympic surfing, more than 15,000 km from Paris.

Mavericks, the big-wave break near Half Moon Bay, gets its size from what?

An oddly shaped underwater rock formation turns North Pacific winter swells into waves that can top 50 feet, and the break has killed expert big-wave surfers, among them Mark Foo in 1994.

Punta Cana is a resort area at the eastern tip of which Caribbean nation?

The Dominican Republic's Punta Cana was jungle and empty beach when Frank Rainieri and his partners bought it in 1969; in 1984 they opened their own international airport to fly tourists in.

Cancún lies on the Yucatán Peninsula, but in which Mexican state?

Quintana Roo's biggest city barely existed before 1970, when Mexico's central bank chose a near-empty sandbar for a purpose-built resort; Cancún now dwarfs the state capital, Chetumal.

The resort city of Acapulco lies in which Mexican state?

Guerrero's Acapulco is home to the La Quebrada cliff divers, who must time each leap to an incoming wave, because the water in the narrow gulch below deepens only as the swell rolls in.

Whose debut vocal turned "The Girl from Ipanema" into a Grammy-winning worldwide hit?

Astrud Gilberto had never sung professionally, but her husband João Gilberto could not sing in English, so she took the English verses; the single won Record of the Year in 1965.

"Surfin' U.S.A." is a rewrite of which Chuck Berry song?

'Sweet Little Sixteen' supplied the tune, so under pressure from Chuck Berry's publisher the Beach Boys' manager signed over the copyright, and Berry is credited as the song's co-writer.

Which band made "Wipe Out" famous in 1963?

The Surfaris, a Glendora, California band, cut 'Wipe Out' in 1962 as a B-side; the twelve-bar instrumental takes its name from surf slang for falling off a board.

The Beach Boys' "Kokomo" was recorded for which 1988 film?

Cocktail gave the Beach Boys their first US number one in 22 years, and they managed it without Brian Wilson, who took no part in recording 'Kokomo'.

Which group recorded the original "Under the Boardwalk" in 1964?

The Drifters cut 'Under the Boardwalk' in May 1964, the day after lead singer Rudy Lewis died, with Johnny Moore taking the vocal; it reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100.

Which silent-era comedy legend appears in 1965's Beach Blanket Bingo?

Buster Keaton, nearly 70, was hired by American International Pictures to supply sight gags for its beach party films and appeared in four of them in 1964 and 1965, near the end of his life.

Bruce Springsteen's debut album sends greetings from which Jersey Shore resort?

Asbury Park gave its name to an album that sold modestly and had no hit single, yet it launched Springsteen, who was soon a regular at the town's Stone Pony club.

In Cast Away, Tom Hanks plays a troubleshooter for which company?

FedEx employs Hanks's stranded troubleshooter; filming stopped for most of a year so he could lose weight and grow a beard, and director Robert Zemeckis used the gap to shoot What Lies Beneath with the same crew.

Which 1966 documentary followed two surfers around the world chasing perfect waves?

The Endless Summer takes its title from Bruce Brown's idea that a surfer with enough time and money could follow summer between the hemispheres forever; the film cost just $50,000 to make.

Which resort's 1870 boardwalk was laid to keep sand out of hotels?

Atlantic City's first boardwalk was a temporary structure, put up for the summer season to keep sand out of hotel lobbies; it grew into a walk several miles long.

Which famous Atlantic City attraction, opened in 1898, billed itself as 'The Showplace of the Nation'?

Steel Pier's most famous act was the diving horse, which plunged with its rider from a high tower into a tank of water; a plan to revive the show in 2012 was dropped after animal-welfare protests.

Which California pier opened in 1909 simply to carry sewer pipes out past the breakers?

Santa Monica Pier began as a bare municipal pier for the city's sewer outfall; the fun arrived in 1916, when carousel builder Charles Looff added a pleasure pier alongside it.

Visitors dig their own hot-spring pools in the sand at low tide at Hot Water Beach in which country?

New Zealand's Hot Water Beach sits over two underground fissures on the Coromandel Peninsula; the water can emerge scalding, so bathers let seawater cool their pools, and the tide allows about four hours.

Hanauma Bay on Oʻahu formed within what kind of volcanic feature?

Hanauma Bay is a flooded tuff ring, a crater of ash built by explosive eruptions and later breached by the sea; in 1967 it became the state's first Marine Life Conservation District.

Glass Beach near Fort Bragg, California owes its sea glass to what?

Decades of dumping rubbish on the shore, from 1906 until 1967, left the glass; the surf then spent years tumbling the broken bottles into the smooth pebbles that visitors now come to see.

Thailand's Railay Beach, between Krabi and Ao Nang, can be reached only by what means?

A boat is the only way in: high limestone cliffs cut the small peninsula off from the mainland, and the same cliffs have made Railay a famous rock-climbing spot.

Which walled Maya city stands on cliffs above a Caribbean beach on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula?

Tulum was among the last cities the Maya built, and people were still living behind its walls some 70 years after the Spanish reached Mexico; it was abandoned by the end of the 16th century.

Sandboarders flock to Huacachina, a desert oasis ringed by giant dunes, in which country?

Peru's Huacachina is a village built around a small natural lagoon near Ica; visitors ride its dunes on sandboards and buggies, and legend says a fleeing princess's dropped mirror became the lake.

Which Australian city, nicknamed the Glitter Strip, includes the beach suburb of Surfers Paradise?

The Gold Coast was the plain South Coast until the 1950s, when soaring land prices earned it the nickname; the council made the name official in 1958, and it became a city a year later.

Which marine habitats are nicknamed the rainforests of the sea?

Coral reefs cover only a tiny fraction of the ocean, yet about a quarter of all marine species depend on them at some point in their lives.

Which country's Ítalo Ferreira won the first men's Olympic gold medal in surfing?

Brazil's Ítalo Ferreira, the reigning world champion, beat Kanoa Igarashi in the final; he had learned to surf on the lid of the coolbox his father used to carry fish to restaurants.

Which beachcomber's prize, nicknamed floating gold, is used to make perfume last longer?

Ambergris forms in a sperm whale's gut around the sharp beaks of the squid it eats; it starts out foul-smelling, but after years adrift it washes up as a prized perfume fixative.

Playa de las Teresitas, built with sand shipped from the Sahara, is on which island?

Las Teresitas, near Santa Cruz de Tenerife, was created in 1973 with golden Saharan sand in place of the island's natural black volcanic shore, and is sheltered by an offshore breakwater.

Which founding member of the Beach Boys was the only avid surfer in the group?

Dennis Wilson, the band's drummer, was the one who suggested they write songs about surfing and the teenage lifestyle growing up around it.

Which 1966 Beach Boys album, featuring God Only Knows, did Paul McCartney often call his favourite record?

Pet Sounds put bicycle horns, Coca-Cola cans and the bandleader's own barking dogs on record alongside the orchestra.

Which Beach Boys single, pieced together in four Hollywood studios, features the wail of an Electro-Theremin?

Good Vibrations took about 20 sessions and more than 90 hours of tape, making it the costliest pop single recorded up to that time.

Beach Boys lead singer Mike Love was which relation to the brothers who founded the band with him?

Their cousin through his mother Emily, a sister of the brothers' father Murry, Mike Love is also the uncle of NBA champion Kevin Love.

Which inland European capital began turning its riverside roads into a summer beach with sand and palm trees in 2002?

Paris launched Paris-Plages beside the Seine under mayor Bertrand Delanoë; the 2017 edition went without sand after the city dropped its supplier, Lafarge.

Which chewy candy became a seaside souvenir after taking off on the Atlantic City boardwalk in the 1880s?

Salt water taffy has never contained a drop of the ocean; one origin legend tells of a storm washing the sea over a batch of candy.

Special glands above a gull's eyes let the seaside bird safely do what that most land animals cannot?

Gulls can drink seawater because the glands draw off the excess brine, which then leaves the bird's body through its nostrils.

Which singer starred opposite Barbara Hershey in Beaches, the 1988 drama about friends who meet under a boardwalk?

Bette Midler's ballad from the film, Wind Beneath My Wings, reached number one and won the Grammy for Record of the Year.

Which seashore animal feeds by pushing its own stomach out of its body and into a clam or mussel?

Starfish pry a clam open by a crack, slide the stomach inside and digest the soft flesh there before pulling it back in.

The famous opening beach run in Chariots of Fire was filmed on West Sands in which Scottish town?

St Andrews doubled for Broadstairs in Kent in the film, and the runners pass the 18th hole of the town's Old Course golf links.

Competitors at the Flora-Bama beach bar's annual toss throw which dead fish across the Florida–Alabama line?

Mullet are thrown from a ten-foot circle in Florida into Alabama, at a spring beach party that has raised money for local youth charities.

Which Texas beach city built a 17-foot seawall and raised its ground level after a 1900 hurricane?

Galveston lost between 6,000 and 12,000 people to the storm, which remains the deadliest natural disaster in United States history.

Which drilling rig's 2010 explosion sent oil and tar balls onto Gulf beaches from Louisiana to Florida?

Deepwater Horizon caused the largest marine oil spill in the industry's history, surpassing the earlier Ixtoc I blowout in the very same Gulf.

Which military jet display team, based at a nearby air station, is known for flyovers of Pensacola Beach?

Blue Angels pilots fly from Naval Air Station Pensacola, the squadron's home base since it moved there from Corpus Christi in Texas.

Winter, the prosthetic-tailed star of Dolphin Tale, lived at an aquarium in which Florida Gulf Coast city?

Clearwater Marine Aquarium took in the injured calf, and the gel sleeve devised for her artificial tail later eased prosthetic limbs for human amputees.

Which Texas island, home to a national seashore, is the longest barrier island in the world?

Padre Island takes its name, Spanish for father, from the missionary priest José Nicolás Ballí, who once owned it.

Which Florida island's east-west tilt gathers so many seashells that collectors' bent posture bears its name?

Sanibel runs east to west where most barrier islands run north to south, and the bend of its beachcombers is known as the Sanibel stoop.

The white sand of Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida was eroded from granite in which mountain range?

The sand was ground from the Appalachians into crystal so fine and pale that it is routinely compared to sugar.

Which resort city on Florida's Emerald Coast styles itself the World's Luckiest Fishing Village?

Destin is named after Leonard Destin, a Connecticut fishing captain who settled there in the late 1840s, and it claims Florida's largest fishing fleet.

Which sea turtle, the smallest of all, nests mostly on Gulf of Mexico beaches in Tamaulipas and Texas?

Kemp's ridley females come ashore together by the hundreds in mass nestings called arribadas, Spanish for arrivals.

Which colourful reef fish grinds up coral as it feeds and excretes it as the sand of tropical beaches?

Parrotfish scrape algae from coral with tightly packed teeth, grind the swallowed rock with a second set of teeth in the throat, and pass it out as fine sand.

Which farm animals swim out to greet tourists at Big Major Cay, an uninhabited island in the Exumas?

Pigs were left there, one legend says, by sailors who meant to come back and cook them but never returned.

Which Indian Ocean nation of coral atolls, famous for beach resorts, is the lowest-lying country in the world?

The Maldives averages about 1.5 metres above the sea, and in 2009 its president held a cabinet meeting underwater to dramatise the threat of rising seas.

A schoolgirl's geography lesson saved some 100 beachgoers from the 2004 tsunami at Mai Khao in which part of Thailand?

Phuket's Mai Khao was among the few beaches with no deaths that day, because ten-year-old Tilly Smith spotted the warning signs she had studied in class two weeks earlier.

Kuta, a fishing village that became a surfers' beach resort in the 1960s, is on which Indonesian island?

Bali's Kuta was one of the first towns on the island to see mass tourism, drawing surfers from Australia with its consistent waves.

Which small Indian state, under Portuguese rule until 1961, is famed for beaches such as Baga and Calangute?

Goa spent about 451 years under Portuguese rule, which ended only when Indian troops took the territory in December 1961, fourteen years after independence.

Harbour Island, whose pink sand is tinted by tiny red-shelled organisms, belongs to which island nation?

The Bahamas owes the blush on the island's east-side beaches to foraminifera, microscopic organisms with reddish-pink cases.

Monuriki, the uninhabited island where Tom Hanks was stranded in Cast Away, belongs to which Pacific nation?

Fiji's Monuriki is also one of the few places where the endangered Fiji crested iguana lives, and its habitat has been under restoration since 2011.

Which lagoon-ringed island in French Polynesia was an American military supply base during World War II?

Bora Bora received nearly 7,000 soldiers in Operation Bobcat, and its wartime airstrip was French Polynesia's only international airport until 1960.

Grace Bay, the resort-lined beach on the island of Providenciales, belongs to which tropical island group?

Turks and Caicos has most of its people on Providenciales, even though that island is only the third largest of the group by area.

Which singer named a chain of resorts after Margaritaville, his 1977 hit about a season in a beach town?

Jimmy Buffett's song was added to the National Recording Registry in 2023 for its cultural significance.

Which rapper, raised in the state it celebrates, guests on Katy Perry's 2010 summer hit California Gurls?

Snoop Dogg was chosen after Perry browsed lists of West Coast rappers online, and the title's spelling salutes the Big Star song September Gurls.

Which singer's 1978 hit Copacabana is set in a New York nightclub rather than on the famous Rio beach?

Barry Manilow had been a regular at the real Copacabana club in the 1960s, and the story song won him a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

Which future coach on The Voice topped the country chart for four weeks with his 2004 single Some Beach?

Blake Shelton's narrator escapes traffic and the dentist's chair by daydreaming of the shore, and the title doubles as a Southern-accented curse.

Which New York punk band's highest-charting American single was the 1977 surf-style song Rockaway Beach?

Ramones bassist Dee Dee wrote it about the Queens beach he loved, and guitarist Johnny called him the only real beachgoer in the band.

Which band's debut single Rock Lobster, set at a surreal beach party, pushed John Lennon to record again?

The B-52's reminded Lennon so much of Yoko Ono's music that he ended his five-year break from the studio and made Double Fantasy, the last album released in his lifetime.

Which guitarist, nicknamed the King of the Surf Guitar, recorded the version of Misirlou used in Pulp Fiction?

Dick Dale owed his 1990s comeback to the film, which won him a new audience and led to four more albums and world tours.

Which singer made her recording debut on saxophonist Stan Getz's bossa nova hit The Girl from Ipanema?

Astrud Gilberto was picked because she was the only Brazilian at the session who spoke English well, while her husband João sang the Portuguese verses.

Which duo's 1963 hit Surf City became the first surf song to reach number one in America?

Jan and Dean got the song from the Beach Boys' chief songwriter, who co-wrote it with Jan Berry, to the reported fury of his own father and manager.

Which surf rock band recorded the 1963 novelty hit Surfin' Bird in landlocked Minneapolis, far from any ocean?

The Trashmen stitched it together from two R&B songs by the Rivingtons, who won the writing credit after threatening to sue for plagiarism.