The green color comes from algae living in the tissues of the anemone. Up close and personal, the Giant Green Anemone’s mouth and tentacles look beautiful–and menacing to the creatures that are its prey. The Sunflower Star encounters a Giant Green Anemone in a tide pool notice how two of the star’s arms are recoiling after being stung by the anemone The Ochre Sea Star comes in three major color variants, which are playing Twister on a barnacle-encrusted rock Hikers with a beautiful sunset backlighting the airborne sea sprayĪt lowest tide we climbed over rocks completely blanketed by slippery kelp this tidal channel blocked our way from going any further, but here we were able to see a Leather Star–a sea star we had never before observed Just be careful to observe the tide charts … It is a fascinating glimpse into the watery world, which can seem like an alternative universe because the lifeforms are so different. I’ll speak to the specific experiences in the captions, just suffice it to say that the Leather Stars, Blood Stars, chitons, crabs, sculpins, kelp, and isopods were endlessly fascinating.Įnjoy the pictures, and go tide pooling if you get a chance–especially with children. And we ended up having two of the best tide pool experiences of our naturalist lives. On our 2011 Fourth of July hike to Point of Arches, we always kept the tide charts in the back of our minds. Sunflower Star and reflected light off sand ripples at lowest tide So, we waded nearly thigh deep through wintery saltwater in order to make it safely back. When we came to a tidal channel that was blocking our route back, we realized that we didn’t have time to retrace our steps and look for an alternate route, and that we had to plunge through it. We lost track of time while I was photographing, and were late in deciding to walk back to the beach. In fact, we learned an important lesson during our last morning of tide pooling: they’re called TIDE pools for a reason. Our favorite experience on that trip was exploring the tide pools of Point of Arches, where we saw Blood Stars and Aggregating Sea Anemones and Giant Green Anemones. The beach was frosty and mostly deserted, though we met one melancholy couple who were enjoying a last Pacific Northwest backpacking trip before moving from Seattle to Iowa (not that there’s anything wrong with cornfields!).
The weather was unseasonably clear and cold, with no rain predicted–perfect for a winter backpacking trip. The first time we visited Shi Shi Beach and Point of Arches in Olympic National Park, it was the Martin Luther King holiday weekend in January, 1991. Sunset glow illuminating the conglomerate rocks and salt spray at Point of Arches A PLACE APART: Views from a Fire Lookout.Join 5,603 other subscribers Recent Posts
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