Tide Pool Etiquette

This post is part one in a two-part series by Minette Layne, a tide pool naturalist and docent in Seattle and a very special guest contributor at Boy’s Almanac. Minette is a frequent and, might I say, AWESOME photographer of wildlife and otherwise. You can find her images on Flickr. Today, she will give us all tips on how to be better amateur naturalists on the reefs at low tide:

Know When To Go

The first step when planning a tide pool outing is to know when to go. When I first started going out to look at the sea creatures, it was like a game of chance. One day I’d head to the beach to find it miraculously uncovered, with thousands of critters just waiting to be found. More often, however, I’d show up to find water completely covering the beach. Frustrating. Eventually, I learned to read a tide table.

For less than $2.00, you can pick up a tide table book (I’m particularly fond of Dot’s Fishing Guide because it’s slim, about the size of a book of checks and easily fits in my photo bag or back pocket). Or, for free you can check the tides online. There are lots of websites out there to tell you the tide predictions for your local area. I’m particularly fond of NOAA. If you’re going to be tide pooling with children, it’s a great idea to pick up a tide table book and learn how to read the tables together.

Tide tables can be confusing at first, but with just a little understanding of how they work, they can become fun and easy to decipher. A couple of important things to remember: There are usually two high tides and two low tides every day, and one of the low tides will be lower than the other. When you look at the tide table, look for numbers with a - (minus sign) in front of them.

The greater the number after that minus sign, the lower the tide will be. Another thing to remember is that summer and winter are usually the best times for tide pooling, because the most dramatic tides occur around the solstices. Fall and spring aren’t such great times to go, because the tidal changes are less dramatic. And one last thing: the best tides occur when the moon is full (completely round and bright) or new (completely dark). You don’t need a tide book or fancy computer website to tell you when it might be a good time to go tide pooling, you just need to know the season and take a look at what the moon is up to. If it’s winter and the moon is full, odds are you’re going to have some spectacular tides.
(…like last week!)

Once you’ve decided that it’s a good time to go tide pooling and have checked your local tide tables to find out when the lowest tide of the day occurs, plan to be out at the tide pools for about 1 hour on either side of the low tide. For example, if the tide is scheduled to be -1.0 feet at 3:00 in the afternoon, your best window for tide pooling will be from 2:00 until about 4:00. Don’t be late!

Know What To Take

The kind of clothes you should wear tide pooling varies depending on where you live and what time of year you’re heading out. You’ll know what to put on to keep yourself warm (or cool!) enough, but the most important piece of clothing is your shoes (though Chas will disagree). You’ll want to wear something with enough traction to help you stay upright as you travel (carefully!) over slippery rocks. If it’s warm out, children do best wearing some type of rugged sandal (like Keens) or, in any weather, rubber boots with good treads.

More interesting to boys (and girls!) are the gadgets you can bring along to make tide pooling more interesting. Here’s what I bring:

• · A cheap plastic bowl with a long loop of string attached to one side and a short loop of string attached to the other. Loop the long string around a belt loop or through the hole on a zipper (I usually loop the string through the strap on my waders) and then safety pin the second loop somewhere on your clothes. When you find an animal that you want to look at more closely (or a fish that won’t stop swimming around in a tide pool), you can gently put it in the bowl (with plenty of water so it can breathe). That way, the animal will be happier and you’ll have the time to really see what it looks like. When I’m done looking at the critter, I put it back in the tide pool and pin the bowl back on my shirt and my hands are free for other things.

• · A magnifying glass on a little string around my neck.
• · A little pocket flashlight for looking under rocks and ledges.
• · A camera.

Know How To Look

Okay, so you’re at the beach at the right time and you have all your smart gear with you. Now what?

The first thing I like to do is to head right down to the water’s edge:

Of course, depending on where you live, that might work well or it might get you swept out to sea! If you live somewhere with fairly calm water (like Seattle) head right down to the water’s edge or find a big rock that’s uncovered and go there. If you live somewhere with scary, crashing waves (like San Francisco), head to a calm pool or big uncovered rock that’s in a safe place.

It’s important never to forcefull remove a sea star, such as this Ochre star, from a substrate. In doing so, you might actually rip apart his tube feet that so tenaciously protect him from the strong surf.

Likewise, it might be tempting to poke a sea anemone to watch it squirt out a stream of water (and we know by experience, thank you Chas), but it’s not kind and may in fact hurt the creature.

Now start to look. At first, you might not notice very many animals. But stop and wait a minute. Listen for sounds. Do you hear something that sounds like Rice Crispies crackling in a bowl of milk?

(Barnacles!)

Do you hear squirting sounds?

(Taken by Minette)

(Clams!)

Many animals will stop moving when a person comes near them, but if you sit still for a moment, not moving and not casting a shadow on the tide pool, the little animals will start moving again.

Usually the first ones to start moving again are shrimp, hermit crabs, and little tide pool sculpins (fish) but if you’re lucky, you might even find an octopus by sitting quietly and waiting for it to come out. If you can see the animal well in the tide pool, it’s best to leave it there and just watch what it does. If you can’t see it very well, gently put it into your observation bowl to take a closer look for a few minutes.

This is a molting hermit crab that we managed to find last weekend, during that famous full moon, at Moss Beach.

And this is a tide pool sculpin!

It’s best to only put one animal at a time into the bowl (some animals, like crabs, will start fighting with each other if they’re in the bowl together) and it’s best to keep them in the bowl for no more than a few minutes (they might get too hot in there or get really stressed out).

Ranger Rick showed us how the pheromones from a six-legged sea star, when detected, can make a limpet (it’s prey!) run like MAD in the opposite direction.

Sometimes you can’t see the animals because they’re hiding on the bottom of a rock. Take your flashlight and stick your head under there, if you can, and take a look. It’s best not to roll a large rock over, because you’ll squish the little animals that live on the bottom of that rock! If a rock is small enough that you can lift it completely up and turn it over without rolling it (grinding it), it’s probably okay to do that.

But be gentle and be very careful when you put the rock back. Always put it back down like you found it, and maybe slip a little tiny rock under one edge of it to keep it from squishing the animals on the bottom of the rock.

Other animals hide down in the sand on the beach. Keep a close eye out for weird lumps and bumps or trails that look like there might be a tunnel under there. Find where the trail ends or look for an especially interesting bump and start digging down in the sand with your hands. You might find a crab or a snail or a sand dollar…or you might just find a rock.

Tide pool etiquette is just one of those things you need to be aware of nowadays, especially, since more and more people are exploring the intertidal reefs. Good manners are contagious; once you start adopting these techniques, and doing it with flair and enthusiasm, then other people will catch on. It’s something you can do not only for your enjoyment of the reefs but for everyone else’s, too.

Check back tomorrow for tips on better tide pool photography! And happy tide pooling!

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tidal widgets are also available:

for iPhone

for your computer