Santa Cruz · Fathom Surf

Fathom Surf · 3D terrain

Natural Bridges to New Brighton

Santa Cruz, from the Westside round Pleasure Point to Capitola

Starting the 3D engine

Under the cursor

—Move over the map to read elevation

Places

Turn on Move markers to drag them, or rename them here. Changes are saved in this browser.

Map style and legend

Contour lines (interval adapts to zoom) Shoreline Satellite photo on top Photo opacity80%

Shoreline ( NAVD88, about the low-tide line) Past the 3 ft grid, depths come from NOAA's 33 ft model, down Soquel and Monterey canyons to deep, out

Roads and paths

Roads Paths Stairs Railway

Highway Street Footpath, trail Bike path Stairs Railway

From OpenStreetMap, as of 15 Jul 2026. Hover a line for its name. Service roads show from zoom 15.5 and sidewalks from 17.5 to keep the view readable.

About the data

Coverage: 56% of cells measured 0–500 yd out; the rest estimated
Range: inland to (3 ft grid), (model)
Grid: 3 ft (13 ft when zoomed out)
Land & beach: USGS 3DEP 3 ft, Santa Cruz County 2020
Surf zone: USGS nearshore survey, Mar 2024 (Cowell's to Twin Lakes); USACE 2014 lidar patches
Seafloor: California Coastal Conservancy topobathy, 3 ft, 2009–2011 (CSUMB multibeam); gaps from NOAA NCEI CUDEM, 2023
Deep water: NOAA NCEI Monterey DEM, 33 ft, 2012
Photo: Esri World Imagery, live

Land and beach come from the USGS 2020 Santa Cruz County survey. It has no seafloor and flattens the sea to one level off the waterline. Under the water the depths come from the best survey there: from Cowell's to Twin Lakes, USGS's March 2024 survey by personal watercraft and on foot (lines apart, gridded at 6 ft); a few patches of the 2014 USACE lidar, which saw almost no bottom in Monterey Bay's murkier water; and, from about down, the 2009–2011 California Coastal Conservancy topobathy, mostly CSUMB multibeam sonar at 3 ft, which shows the reefs off Lighthouse Point and Pleasure Point. No survey has measured the strip between the shore and that depth elsewhere, up to about wide off Pleasure Point, so there NOAA's 2023 CUDEM interpolates across it: the readout says "estimated", and the bottom there is smooth because nothing is known about it. The lines on top are OpenStreetMap roads and paths, and the hatched ground is where no survey has a measurement. Further out the depths come from NOAA's 2012 Monterey tsunami model: 33 ft cells running down the shelf (about at its edge, out) into Soquel Canyon and the head of Monterey Canyon, to .