Q. What is it supposed to be on the show?

A. A beach.

Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

A. In Bimini, the westernmost of the Bahama islands, 53 miles east of Miami.

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. In Episode 5 (of Season 3), "Turning Biminese".

Miguel Prado has told Dexter about a murderer named Ethan Turner, who has been killing off his rich wives for their money.

Dexter stalked him at a sporting goods store, and discovered that he was going on a cruise to Bimini. So he sailed his boat to the island, planning to intercept Turner there.

In this scene, we see a wide shot of the beach, with the cruise ship docked on the horizon offshore.

Dexter is lying on the beach, sunning himself, and watching the married Turner flirt with a girl in a bikini.

Dexter has another daydream of Harry warning him that he will have to choose between his domestic situation with Rita and his lethal hobby, but he's convinced that he can make time for both.

Then we hear an announcement that the last shuttles to the cruise ship will be leaving soon. Dexter bluffs his way on board the ship, and later kills and dismembers Turner in his cabin.

Q. What is it actually in real life?

A. A beach, but 2,300 miles away from Bimini.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. In the first & second seasons, the "Dexter" crew used a beach area called Bayshore Beach (at the corner of 54th Place and Ocean Blvd) for several scenes, including a beachside restaurant in the first season where Dexter met Debra's new guy (who turned out to be Dexter's long-lost brother), and in the second season as a tropical cafe where Debra talked to Lundy, and as the location of the pier where Dexter dropped tools into the water (to frame Doakes).

This scene wasn't shot on that small beach, which faces inland towards the Alamitos Bay. But it was filmed right across the highway (Ocean Blvd), at the larger beach - which faces the ocean, just south of the intersection of Ocean Blvd & Claremont Place, in Long Beach, CA.

The cruise ship on the fake horizon was artificially inserted via green-screen, which also helped mask Long Beach's infamous oil islands, which lie just a mile off the coast.

The beach is right next to a parking lot, where the Long Beach peninsula begins, about a mile southeast of the Belmont Pier.

There is a paved walkway leading from the northwest edge of that parking lot, about 500 feet out onto the sand of the beach, almost to the tide line (which no doubt proved helpful in moving the filming equipment).




I shot this very wide-angle photo below in 2009.  ( Note the oil island and the oil tankers off the Long Beach coast. )




And here's a blow-up of one of those photos, showing a close-up of that oil island off the coast.




Here is an aerial photo of the beach. And here is a map link.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A.  At first, I was fairly certain that the scene had been shot on nearby Bayshore Beach since the wicker tiki huts in the scene strongly resemble the Alfredo's snack stand on that inland beach, and I knew that they had filmed on that little beach several times in the past.

But it was also clear that they had heavily used green-screen/CGI effects to insert that cruise ship on the horizon, so I couldn't be sure of it.  When I finally heard from someone who knew, I learned that it was actually shot on the main beach across the street from Bayshore.