Two surfers bobbed in the dark green swells off Martins Beach, their shiny wetsuits matching the glistening coat of a black seal playing nearby. The roar of crashing waves alternated with the sizzling sound of sea foam soaking into the coarse sand. A delicate fog tucked into the coves of the San Mateo County coastline, giving the setting a dreamlike aura and softened the bright Thursday-morning sunlight.

Travelers on Highway 1 stopped to see the famously beautiful and famously controversial stretch of Northern California shore — many for the first time.

It was a notable day at the beach apart from the unseasonably warm late-October weather. A day before, the California Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a lower-court ruling that billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla must allow public access to Martins Beach — a small victory for environmental groups and surfers hoping a years-long dispute was coming to an end.

“For me, it’s a win for the little guy,” 38-year-old Half Moon Bay resident Dustin Cline said as he carried his surfboard down from a parking area along the highway toward the beach. “You can’t own the ocean.”

Wednesday’s decision was the latest blow to Khosla’s effort to restrict access to the beach. He bought the section of Pacific coastline for $32.5 million in 2008 and a year later erected signs reading, “Beach closed, keep out.” In 2010, he closed a gate, blocking the road running to the beach just south of Half Moon Bay.

The Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit group, sued Khosla after he shut the gate, setting off a legal fight.

Khosla has 90 days to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. His attorneys have not responded to calls.

Khosla, though, seemed to budge on his previous stance, opening the gate for limited times after a state appeals court in August reaffirmed a 2014 ruling by a San Mateo County court judge ordering him to yield access to the beach.

But halfway down the road from the now open gate, a man Thursday stood sentry, charging cars $10 to park in a small gravel lot near a line of orange cones blocking the road. When asked for whom he was collecting money, the man refused to answer.

Marc and Lise Maisano, a retired couple from San Francisco, drove past the beach turnoff on a day trip down the highway toward Santa Cruz. When they recognized the contentious spot about which they’d been reading in the newspaper for years, they turned around to see it.

“What a fiasco,” Lise Maisano said as she and her husband decided whether they’d walk from the fee-parking area down to the beach.

The man at the lot told them the walk was steep and treacherous, and the ocean was dangerous — giving them pause. They decided to park for free a short distance up the road and walk down. They soon discovered the warnings were unfounded.

“I hope this is finally coming to a conclusion,” Marc Maisano said. “I’ve been surfing most my life, and it seemed ridiculous that a billionaire could buy a beach and keep people off.”

The California Coastal Commission has ordered Khosla to remove the gate and his signs, and said it will seek a court order and fines against him. He could face fines of $11,250 a day, or more than $4 million a year.

Cline has learned to ignore the roller-coaster legal arguments, and months ago began flouting Khosla’s attempts to block the beach by simply walking around the gate.

“I don’t care about the gate,” he said. “As long as the court said it’s OK, I’m going.”

He was more concerned about the quality of the surf as he paddled to the waves that exploded against a massive shark-fin-shaped column of rock.

He joined 35-year-old Jameson Kenway, who was getting in a morning surfing session before heading to work at Nor Cal Surf Shop in Pacifica.

“This puts you in the right state of mind,” Kenway said. “It gets the blood flowing, and the sunshine feels good for sure.”

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: EvanSernoffsky