Fostering ongoing use, study & celebration of ocean pools worldwide
We currently know of only one ocean pool in Mexico – Mazatlan’s Carpa Olivera ocean pool.
Lisbon’s sea pools inspired the development of Mazatlan’s Carpa Olivera ocean pool in 1915. The pool suffered severe hurricane damage in 1954, was abandoned, then redeveloped in 2004, but then again fell into neglect. It was redeveloped in 2015 and remains in use. A spiral water slide adds to the appeal of this pool.
Our monthly newsletter usually provides details of one ‘bonus pool’, a pool that isn’t an ocean pool, but is a pool that our members would like to know about.
Here’s our A-Z list of bonus pools to date. Some of these pools are ghost pools that longer exist or are no longer in use.
Blackrock Baths, Dublin, Ireland
Once Ireland’s best competition pool, this sea pool on Dublin Bay was closed to the public in the late-1980s. The baths were largely demolished in 2012, but this photo shows them back in 2011. For more information about this pool, see:
Broadstairs Tidal Pool, Kent, UK
This tidal pool is on Viking Bay, the main sandy bay in the seaside town of Broadstairs. For more information, see:
Devils Point Sea Pool, Plymouth, UK
Much less formalised that Plymouth’s well-known Tinside Lido, this sea pool at Devils Point is on the UK’s Outdoor Swimming Society’s Wild Swim Map http://wildswim.com/devils-point-pool-plymouth
Emu Point Sea Pool, Albany, WA, Australia
This is a swimming enclosure in sheltered waters. For more information, see:
Jubilee Pool, Penzance, Cornwall, UK
This much celebrated art deco lido is triangular in shape and opened in 1935. By the early-1990s, it had become dilapidated, but was renovated and re-opened in 1994. It had to close in 2014 following storm damage, but was renovated and re-opened in 2016. The Friends of Jubilee Pool were granted a 99-year lease of the pool by Cornwall Council in 2017 and then established ‘Jubilee Pool Penzance Ltd’ (a Community Benefit Society) to operate the pool. For more information, see https://www.jubileepool.co.uk/
Kitsilano Pool, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
This magnificent saltwater swimming pool opened in 1931. It offers views of the sea, the mountains and Vancouver’s skyline. See:
Peel Open Air Swimming Pool, Isle of Man
A grassed area at Peel on the Isle of Man was once the Peel Open Air Swimming Pool built in the 1950s after cliff erosion had made the sea pool opened in 1896 at nearby Traie Fogog unsafe. This short-lived 20th century outdoor pool closed in the 1970s. Peel’s indoor public pool opened in 2003. For more information:
Pittenweem pool, Fife, Scotland, UK
This pool is filled by the Firth of Forth. The local council has ceased to maintain this pool. For more information, see:
Port Kembla Olympic Pool, Port Kembla, NSW, Australia
This pool is a seawater pool on a hill rather than a classic ocean pool, but it does have a great site and great views. Piping the seawater uphill rather than using town water was a great and green decision!
For more information about this pool, see:
Tinside Lido, Plymouth, UK
Sited below Plymouth Hoe, this is one of the UK’s famed lidos and the subject of some memorable interwar railway posters. For more information, see: https://www.everyoneactive.com/centre/tinside-lido/
Traie Meanagh Sea Pool, Port Erin, Isle of Man
This seawater pool was popular from 19th century up to the 1960s, but later became a fish-farm that ceased operating in the 1990s and was in decay by 2011. For more information, see:
Vico Road Pool, Dalkey, Ireland
This seawater pool at the foot of a cliff on the Irish Sea. For more information, see: http://outdoorswimming.ie/Co/Dublin/vico_road.html
Walpole Bay Sea Pool, Margate, Kent, UK
This magnificent sea pool turned 80 in 2017. It is on the English Channel in the Cliftonville area of Margate and has its own lift down from the cliff above the pool. For more information, see:
From the early-1950s to the late-1980s, there was an Olympic-size ocean pool at Burleigh on Queensland’s Gold Coast.
Proposals and discussions about creating a swimming pool on Burleigh’s foreshore to give locals and holidaymakers a safe swimming area.
Gold Coast personality, Jack Evans (then the lessee of the Burleigh dressing pavilion) builds Burleigh’s first swimming pool on the foreshore next to an outdoor skating rink. The pool is 50m long.
A cyclone destroys the outdoor skating rink on the Burleigh foreshore, but does not destroy the pool.
Formation of a swimming club based at the pool
The Burleigh Rock Pool was replaced by a swimming centre within “The Beach House” complex.
A 1970s aerial view of this pool and a brief outline of its history appears on page 26 of the Burleigh Heads Heritage & Character Study prepared for the Gold Coast City Council by Environmental Resources Management Australia and the Office of City Architect and Heritage, Gold Coast City Council.
(In the 1950s, the rockshelf at this beach was blasted to create a safe bathing pool. We have no images of this pool, which is probably now a ghost pool)
1893
This beach was named for its most distinctive feature, the wreck of the SS Dicky driven ashore during a cyclone in 1893.
1947
The area around Dicky Beach was developed for housing.
1952
In April, the Landsborough Council overseer estimated the cost of the boring and shooting to create a pool on the rockshelf at Dicky Beach was only £54. Although the proposed pool site was only 150 feet from the lifesavers’ clubhouse, the overseer thought that window damage could be avoided by careful blasting.
By November, the office of the Marine Board of Queensland insisted that construction details in duplicate were required before the Marine Board could consider the swimming pool proposed for Dicky Beach.
In December, the North Caloundra Life Saving Club asked the Landsborough Shire Council ‘to blast the rocks on that beach, which would be cleared by voluntary effort by local residents with the object of making a safe bathing pool’. By 24 December, Dr J. H. B. Henderson’s complaint about ‘damage to his residence at Dickey [sic] Beach Caloundra, through blasting operations on the rock pool’ was referred to the Landsborough Shire Council engineer.
1953
By September, Queensland’s Marine Board was asking whether the Council ‘will accept responsibility for control and maintenance of the pool that the North Caloundra Life Saving Club propose making in the rocks at Dickey [sic] Beach, Caloundra’. Landsborough Council agreed that it would accept this responsibility.
By November 1953, Landsborough Council’s overseer was reporting on ‘blasting of swimming pool at Dickey [sic] Beach’
1954
In February, Landsborough Shire Councillor G. A. H. Watson informed the Caloundra Chamber of Commerce that ‘the swimming pool under construction at Dickey [sic] Beach … was being excavated by the North Caloundra life savers and local residents, who had asked the Council to have the rock blasted and remove any surplus rock of use for road purposes’.
In August, the fourth annual report of the North Caloundra Life Saving Club reportedly stated that ‘Real work has begun on the proposed rock pool under the direction of the Landsborough Shire Council, and surface rock has been blasted over approximately the whole of the area surveyed (165ft. x 45ft.)’.
In September, the North Caloundra Life Saving Club’s suggestion that Council resume work on the Dicky Beach rock pool was referred to the Council Overseer.
By October 1954, the Council overseer was reporting on ‘clearing swimming pool at Dickie [sic] Beach’.
After 1954
We have no information about this pool after 1954.
As the Google Earth image shows, Hawaii’s Waikiki Beach Pool is a large protected swimming area off Oahu’s Kuhio Beach Park. Its two nearly enclosed pools are the happy outcome of efforts to control beach erosion in the 1950s by creating the Kapahulu Groyne and the low rock walls that run perpendicular to the groyne and parallel to the beach.
Unlike the nearby and long-closed Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium, this is not a formal pool designed to cater for competitive swimming.