Walking along the shore and searching for these pools can be an educational experience for old and young alike. It gives you a chance to see the creatures of the sea up close and clearly. Most tide pools are shallow and small, but a few can actually be the size of a wading pool. With a small surface area to be affected by wind, the surface is often like a looking glass. While it makes it easy for you to see into the water, it also makes it easy for what is trapped in the pool to see you coming! When you spot a tidal pool and approach it slowly and quietly, you can have a chance to see fish swimming, but if you are a bit too noisy, they will swiftly dart into the protection of the nooks and crannies of the rocks. Strange looking Frog Fish, lovely purple, green or neon blue Damselfish, the little sand colored Blennies, and once in a while, a small Mullet or a few Sardines that are open water fish, can be found in the tidepools. A splash on the surface or a speedy ripple on the water will be an obvious clue that there are fish of some kind. Even if the fish have darted into hiding, there are still the more slowly moving creatures to see.
The Spiny Starfish cannot move fast, and neither can the Sea Urchin. A Hermit Crab, carrying its house on its back, may slowly crawl away, and a shell that looks empty and abandoned to you might suddenly start to move! Try to collect a handful of empty shells and place them in a small pile. Slowly they will move apart as the smallest of hermit crabs stretch their little claws, and drag a home far too large for them now, but of a size to grow into, toward some unknown destination. Watch for the slow undulations of a Sea Hare, a snail without a shell, as its ruffled edges move it through the water, There could be a brightly colored Sea Anemone anchored to the rocks and unmoving, frozen forever in place, with a yellow or orange small and brightly colored Damselfish within its tentacles. Minute brine shrimp look like specks in the water but provide forage for the creatures in these natural pools, as they themselves feed on the silt suspended in the clear water. The Sally Lightfoot Crab is speedy, zipping around the pool both in and out of the water, hiding in the cracks and crevices, often just an edge of its red shell appearing as it tries the impossible task of becoming invisible.
The Limpets move so slowly that it may seem they are part of the rock, but try and pry one loose and you’ll see it looks like a Chinese hat. Conch shells of several varieties also move slowly, and may be covered by algae and barnacles, again appearing to be part of the rocks themselves.
A universe unto itself: Yes, that is what a tide pool is. You can spend hours observing one until you finally fall into that space within yourself, calm, peaceful and serene as you become one with it, every creature within now known to you, and you to them. A beautiful, wondrous universe, ever evolving, constantly changing as one tide after another moves new lives in and old ones out, the universe being reborn, one big bang after another.
