TIDE POOLS

 

HOLD FAST ART INSTALLATION : BIRCH AQUARIUM - UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT SAN DIEGO - SCRIPPS INSTITUTE OF OCEANOGRAPHY

AQUARIUM UCSD - SCRIPPS 

EXCERPT:  On February 8, 2024, Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego is opening Hold Fast, an immersive art installation that explores our local kelp forests and climate change through the lens of three local artists and scientists who are using their unique skills and talents to take climate action. 

Guests will weave through a labyrinth of cyanotype-printed giant kelp by photo-based artist and marine scientist Oriana Poindexter, dive into the details of local species via gyotaku prints by artist Dwight Hwang and witness up-to-the-minute kelp forest mapping by Scripps Oceanography PhD student Mohammad Sedarat. 

“Warming waters and giant kelp don’t mix. We have to be realistic about the outsized impact that climate change has on our local Giant Kelp forests,” said Megan Dickerson, Birch Aquarium’s Director of Exhibits and co-curator of the installation. “But at the same time, local people are doing beautiful things. This Hold Fast installation posits that the actions of local artists and scientists can give us hope that together, as a community, we can make collective change as we also acknowledge climate trauma.”

LEAVE TIDE POOLS ALONE and TAKE THAT TRASH WITH YOU

Visiting a tide pool recently, I was so upset to see a mother directing her two children to pick sea creatures from between the rocks and put them in plastic buckets.  Even if they have some sort of home aquarium set up, these people were ignorant that a TIDE POOL NEEDS TO BE LEFT ALONE.  It is an ECOSYSTEM and by removing any creature, they are upsetting that ecosystem.

PLEASE TAKE PHOTOS ONLY when you go to a tide pool!

TIDE POOLS are SEABED HABITATS

Seabed habitats has a seminar series.  Learn more about this important and essential aspect of the oceans - the tidepools that are near beaches and seacliffs, many of which have been wiped out in port and marina building. 

SEABED HABITATS - SEMINAR SERIES

BEACH ECOLOGY IS OCEAN ECOLOGY!

 BEACH ECOLOGY IS OCEAN ECOLOGY!

Remember to take home anything you brought with you - towels, flip flops, food, cans.. sunscreen and tanning oils... because if you leave it on the beach it's probably going to end up in the ocean and endanger the natural environment of the ocean, lake, or river.

But also remember to leave what belongs to nature - the earth - right where it is.  Do not take sea creatures from tidepools!

Just take photos!

OYSTERS

Since Clams and Oysters are seemingly the most common shells, it seems there is no harm in collecting them.  However, I believe we should only collect the shells that have washed up on the beaches, brought in with the tides, because killing sea creatures is not cool. Taking living animals with shells is still effecting the ocean environment and ecology.
 

TIDE POOLS - LOOK BUT DON'T TAKE

 

STARFISH COLLECTION - USE YOUR CELL PHONE To PHOTOGRAPH THEM IN PLACE

 

REMEMBER NOT TO TAKE ANYTHING FROM A TIDEPOOL.  LOOK, TAKE A PICTURE, TRY TO IDENTIFY THE CREATURES YOU SEE LIVING THERE.  BUT DO NOT DISTURB THE ECOSYSTEM

BACTERIA IN THE LOCAL OCEAN

A recent stroll along a Pacific Ocean path used by local surfers...
A big sign warning that levels of bacteria in the ocean was at high levels and humans should avoid contact with the water.
The sight of surfers in wet suits down below surfing anyway.


A few days earlier we had walked along the rocks and sand about a mile or so north of this location.  While not actually swimming in the water, bacteria is bacteria.  I'd worn shoes, but others had gone barefoot.


How does the sea life - the creatures in the tide pools - withstand this bacteria?
What about the freshly caught fish being served at the restaurant on the pier?


We can stop eating ocean fish.
We can make a recommitment to putting trash in the proper cans, taking electronics and batteries and light bulbs to recycling centers, and to doing a little beach clean up every time we go...

RACHEL CARSON - PESTICIDES PIONEER

RACHEL CARSON, who became famous for just part of her body of work, a book called Silent Spring, which came out in 1962, was a woman who tried to make the wake up call that pesticides were poisoning the environment.  This marine biologist worked long and hard at her avocation, without making much money or becoming rich. Though her research followed scientific methods in her time, today no doubt she'd be a PHD.

Her focus was a bit more on the ocean environment first, what was happening under the water to animals like fish, but she couldn't deep sea dive, and eventually focused on the sea life that was closer to shore in tide pools.

This film shows you how DDT was marketed - almost as if it were good for the environment and our health!

This film also reveals that Carson was an intensely private woman, you could say a bit of a loner, who enjoyed research and having a rich studious life more so than being social.  She also had a battle with breast cancer.

I wonder if Carson ever linked her breast cancer with pollution, in particular pesticides!

HOW ROSE COLORED SEA SLUGS CAN HELP PREDICT EL NINO RAINS

INDEPENDENT : SEA SLUGS AS EL NINO FORCASTERS

EXCERPT:

Hopkins’ rose nudibranchs , as the sea slugs are known, travel as larvae at the whim of warm ocean currents, floating to the bottom as they grow during their first couple months. There they feed exclusively on a pink-colored bryozoan — a diminutive aquatic organism known as a “moss animal” that clusters in colonies — which grows all the way up to British Columbia and imparts the Okenia rosacea‘s remarkable color. Goddard knew that spotting the nudibranchs in high numbers near Morro Bay in mid-January was significant, since they usually hunt down in Southern California. They reminded him of the flourishing pink populations he’d seen near Santa Cruz during 1977’s weak El Niño.

After Morro, Goddard headed up to Monterey to check the tidepools. Along with reports from researchers at UC Santa Cruz, the Bodega Marine Laboratory, and San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences, his hypothesis was confirmed: The little creatures were everywhere, as far north as Humboldt — sometimes by the dozens per square meter....

CALIFORNIA SCIENCE CENTER ECOSYSTEMS : TIDE POOLS, AQUARIUMS, and ENDEAVOR

CALIFORNIA SCIENCE CENTER OFFICIAL!

The California Science Center is a partnership between the State of California and the not for profit California Science Center Foundation.  Call them before you go.  There is a fee for IMAX theater tickets but often the Center is free, or donation based entry.  For readers of this blog, the ECOSYSTMES permanent exhibit is of most interest.  You can walk through a living kelp forest and view many other aquariums.

EBB TIDE : THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC BRIMMING POOL JUNE 2011

Link now to the National Geographic all about tidepool life!

STARFISH - A GREAT VARIETY

IF YOU SEE STARFISH or any other creature in the TIDEPOOLS when the tide is out, leave them where they are. IT IS NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE TO PICK THEM UP AND LET THEM DRY OUT (DIE A SLOW DEATH) so you can collect them... INSTEAD WHY NOT TRY TO DRAW OR PAINT THEM and keep a record of the date, time, beach, and weather...