Growing Up With the Ocean: A South San Diego Story

The Tijuana Estuary is a wetlands habitat at the mouth of Tijuana River between the city of Imperial Beach and the US border with Mexico. It is a birding mecca with many different vantage points for watching birds. | Photo: California Beaches

I grew up in South San Diego, where the ocean wasn't simply a place to visit—it was part of everyday life.

Imperial Beach was my playground. I fished from the pier, rode waves, and spent entire days body surfing until my skin was wrinkled from the saltwater. and sunburned.

As a kid, I remember stepping on tar balls that had washed ashore—thick, sticky globs of oil that clung to your feet like glue. You could scrape and scrub, but they never came off easily. Even then, the ocean carried the scars of human carelessness.

The United States meets Mexico at the Pacific Ocean in Imperial Beach, the southernmost coastal city in California. Just across the international border lies the Tijuana River watershed, most of which is located in Mexico. The river flows north across the border before emptying into the Pacific only about a mile away.

During seasonal storms and heavy rains, the watershed experiences what is often called an urban flush. Rainwater washes accumulated oil, sediment, trash, animal waste, and untreated sewage from streets, canyons, and aging infrastructure into the river. Stormwater systems become overwhelmed, sending polluted runoff through the Tijuana River and eventually into the Pacific Ocean. For decades, this cycle has affected water quality on both sides of the border.

Long before these pollution problems existed, however, the river created one of Southern California's most remarkable natural environments. At its mouth, it formed a tidal estuary where the ocean tides flow in and out of the marsh each day. This unique ecosystem supports salt-tolerant plants such as cordgrass and pickleweed, along with fiddler crabs, mollusks, migratory birds, and countless other species specially adapted to life between fresh and salt water.

Over millions of years, the Tijuana River also carried rocks and cobblestones downstream, depositing them offshore just north of the river mouth. Those ancient deposits formed a submerged cobblestone reef that would eventually become one of California's most legendary surf breaks.

My love for the water eventually shaped my life. I swam competitively in high school and college, and in 1979 I became a lifeguard at Silver Strand State Beach. Back then, the Strand only closed a handful of days each year because of contamination. Today, beach closures can last for months—or even years—as pollution from the Tijuana River continues to flow north. We can send people to the Moon. We can explore Mars. Yet somehow, we still can't keep our own ocean clean.

Written by Darrell Jett | July 27, 2026 | Bonita resident

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