The beautiful Coronado Beach is among the top ten most beautiful beaches in the United States, according to an annual list of best beaches issued by a Florida professor known as Dr. Beach.

However, Hawaii's Kapalua (kaa-paa-LOO-ah) Bay Beach topped the list released by Stephen Leatherman, a professor at Florida International University in Miami.

San Diego's own Coronado Beach landed in spot number nine. The beach is a popular tourist spot. Set right in front of Coronado's historic Hotel Del, the beach faces the Pacific Ocean. Some San Diegans say the beach's sand glistens like gold.

Coronado Beach is the only beach in California to make the list.

Leatherman has been compiling his annual list of top 10 beaches every year since 1991. He uses 50 criteria to evaluate beaches, with the most important categories being water cleanliness, safety (meaning no rip currents or drownings) and management of the beach environment and its facilities. He also looks for fine, soft sand, and gives extra points for beaches that prohibit smoking. He doesn’t collect water from every beach in test tubes himself, by the way, but he does use data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to grade the beaches on water quality.

Leatherman’s list has its origins in a class he taught at the University of Maryland. A student was writing an article for a travel magazine and asked him to come up with a list of the 10 best beaches based on his expertise as a coastal scientist. He began producing his official annual list in 1991 using his 50 criteria and his vast knowledge of U.S. ocean beaches. “I had visited every (ocean) beach in the U.S. for a Department of Interior study ... so that gave me the background data set to work from,” he said.

His goal in producing the list each year, he says, “is to reward those beaches which maintain the high quality and the safety areas but also to encourage other beaches to do the same.” He looks for beaches that “balance nature with the built environment.”

But how come so many states with beloved beaches — in places like Maine, the DelMarva Peninsula, the Jersey shore, the Pacific Northwest and other coastal areas — never make the list, while the same names keep turning up year after year?

Leatherman says it’s all about the math in his categories. Beaches lose points for water that’s too chilly, sand that’s too coarse, condo towers instead of dunes, riptides and drownings, erosion and limited public access.

Leatherman adds that he doesn’t make money from the list. He just finds “it interesting to do” and hopes that the standards he promotes will encourage other beaches “to do the right thing and improve their quality.

The other beaches on the top 10 list are Ocracoke Lifeguarded Beach on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, coming in second, after Hawaii's Kapalua, followed by Grayton Beach State Park in the Florida panhandle; Coopers Beach, Southampton, New York; Coast Guard Beach, Cape Cod, Massachusetts; Lighthouse Beach, Buxton, Outer Banks, North Carolina; Caladesi Island State Park, Dunedin-Clearwater, Florida; then Hapuna on the Big Island, with Coronado Beach, San Diego, California, in ninth place and Kiawah Beachwalker Park, Kiawah Island, South Carolina, coming in 10th.



And don’t worry about that lava-spewing volcano impacting visits to the Kapalua beach. The Kilauea volcano is on a different Hawaiian island, the Big Island.

Leatherman’s list even has a second Hawaiian beach on the same island as the volcano, Hapuna Beach State Park, coming in eighth on the list. But Hapuna is on the opposite side of the Big Island.