You may collect as much jade as you can personally carry. That is the actual rule.
Jade Cove sits in the southern part of Big Sur on the California central coast, and it holds the only concentrated underwater deposit of quality nephrite jade in the world. Collection is permitted with hand tools, down to 90 feet offshore, and the limit is what one person can carry out.
The access is the hard part. A very steep trail of about 0.1 miles runs down from the Plaskett Campground and finishes in a rope-assisted drop to the beach. The cove is two miles south of Sand Dollar Beach and a little over three miles north of Gorda. Shore access is open daily from sunrise to sunset, day use only.
Read the water before you commit to anything. The beach is dangerous at high tide and in storms, and swimming and wading are both discouraged because of the surf and strong rip currents.
Two things worth knowing before you start picking things up. First, jade is a name covering two different metamorphic rocks, nephrite and jadeite, which are made of separate minerals, look extremely alike and were not told apart until 1863. Second, there are large deposits of light-green serpentine along this coast that unwary collectors mistake for jade constantly.
The quality of the nephrite here is good enough to have started the annual Big Sur Jade Festival in 1989. Before the rules tightened, divers were floating whole boulders of it to the surface. The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary now governs collection strictly, so check the current regulations rather than assuming.
Big Sur's beaches are hard to find and worth the effort, and this is the one with treasure in it.
Nephrite jade
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
