Oases of the Oceans

“It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.”

-John Steinbeck; The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)

What comes to mind when you think of oceans?

The blue water? Waves? Or perhaps giant ships sailing through the middle of nowhere. But it’s never land, is it-except for beaches and docks, that is-? Land and ocean are contrasts, like yin and yang, and rarely do we seek one in the other.

So, it isn’t much of a surprise that life in oceans prefers places with access to seafloors bathed by sunlight. Plants and phytoplankton grow in sunlight, and where there’s food, life finds a way to sneak in and stay.

Now imagine the edge of the ocean-the boundary of the world for most marine creatures-a part where water isn’t perpetual; where the Sun shines so brightly that water-dwellers simply would not survive. A place with harsh waves so big and strong you’d be lucky not to break your spine.

And yet, life in tide pools thrives. In tide pools, everything is overkill, and life here took it and owned it. You probably know the feeling of chugging down water when you’re so thirsty you think you might shrivel up? Ask the life here-they know it the best; they experience it every day.

If you lived here, you could’ve been born a lot of things-sea urchins to leopard sharks and maybe even plankton. It’s hard to switch our monkey brains to fit a kelp’s perspective, but try that, too. Every day, on the moon’s command, the water would draw back, and the morning light would fall on you.

Or you spend several hours under the elements on the rocky floor. Being removed from water, prey and predators, all you do is meditate till the next tide comes, and while you’re at it, try to shut as many holes, pores and shells as you could. Oh, and don’t forget that at every moment, there’s a fat chance that a sea-bird or a seal (and sometimes even black bears) might scoop you up for a casual’s breakfast.

Hiraeth is a Welsh word that means a yearning and sadness for the loss of someone or something, or a place we have memories attached to. I certainly could relate to that; I loved my last home. And that was probably why, when I read about the Tidepool Sculpin, I wanted to dedicate a section to it. It’s so human.

Waves are the epitome of a frenemy if you are a resident of the tide pools-particularly in the splash zone.

They bring everything that a marine ecosystem needs to function-water, food, nutrients and even dissolved oxygen. Most of the marine life in the pools will perish if the waves stop coming, and yet, in a rather poetic way, the waves want payback for their sacrifices.

And then the waves step in to ruin the mussels’ day. The sea palms, having rhizoids (primitive algal roots) and flexible stalks, are much less likely to get washed away.

Photographers, naturalists and enthusiasts are fond of tide pools-and why wouldn’t they be? These pools have something for everybody-a photogenic landscape, an amalgamation of life to study, and if not anything, then at least you could hear the waves. Or find creatures few or no one have seen before.

For a long time, there has existed a subgenre in media of finding bewitching animals, mostly aquatic (like supersized fish, etc.), observing, collecting data (and sometimes tagging them) and then releasing the creatures back again.

It is all right as long as you don’t take souvenirs. And yet, too much enthusiasm and too little care would most certainly be catastrophic for tide pools.

Tide pools are some of the most sensitive to change out of all ecological communities, especially in the drier zones. Simply displacing a heap of seaweed or upturning a rock could kill the life hiding under it, whether you mean to or not. So watch your step-don’t squish the life. And if you take a peek under a rock, or anything else for that matter, replace it exactly where it was-even perfectly empty seashells.

If you don’t want to be too hands-on with the organisms, I recommend you pick the trash off of the tide pools and beaches. Like almost any natural ecosystem, tide pools get clogged with plastic and the like. Waves bring in and take away garbage back into the ocean, and then it ends up where it shouldn’t be.

If you are unable to, or choose not to, I will not blame you, for the most important thing is that people love ecosystems like these.

So if you ever visit tide pools, I recommend you bring a camera (your phone will probably suffice) or a canvas, and capture the beauty of the place. Sure, tourists flocking to these places might backfire; but if people aren’t even aware of the existence of tide pools, there won’t be much support to save them.

It’s a terrible price that we’d have to pay back sooner or later. And I’d rather it be sooner, because I want to keep looking back at tide pools.

Source

1. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/tide-pool.html
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide_pool
3. https://web.archive.org/web/20080924061051/http://www.npca.org/marine_and_coastal/beaches/tide_pools.html
4. https://web.archive.org/web/20080724193444/http://www.juandefucamarinetrail.com/botanical_beach.html
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7826377/
6. https://seaworld.org//animals/ecosystems/tide-pools/intertidal-marine-plants/
7. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11160-023-09798-z
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidepool_sculpin

Originally published at https://thespore.substack.com.