Many ocean pools serve as venues for sport and recreation. While the main activities are now recreational and competitive swimming, ocean pools were in the past also seen as suitable venues for water polo and diving.
Water sports at ocean pools are now at club or school level, rather than the elite level and so now tend to receive less summertime media coverage than non-sporting rituals and festivities staged at ocean pools. The coming of winter does, however, often inspire illustrated articles on winter swimmers and the winter swimming competitions at ocean pools.
Print and electronic news media also show images of professional football players and other sporting professionals doing recovery training or fitness work at ocean pools.
Less formalised recreations at ocean pools include chain surfing and jumping from cliffs and rocks into the pool and well as other form of nature play and adventure play, where the ocean pool functions as a skillscape.
