The coast around Hobyo is fringed by a long belt of pale sand dunes — part of the Hobyo grassland and shrubland ecoregion, which runs for several hundred kilometres along the Somali coast. The dunes have been moving slowly inland for decades, encroaching on grazing land and pushing villages back from the shore.
The beach itself is broad and almost completely empty, with strong surf rolling in off the Indian Ocean and the occasional fishing dhow pulled up on the sand. There are no facilities of any kind. Endemic species including the silver dik-dik and several rare birds have been recorded in the surrounding scrub.