~tidepool immersion~ within and just outside

Posted on March 10, 2024 by marybethrew

This is a bird. I found three options on a blog of what it might be. To my eye, it looks most like the surfbird, but based on the description of rock sandpipers being solitary and quiet, that seems like a likely choice. It also resembles (to a person who looks at fish all day) the black turnstone, so I am not ruling that out as an id, either.

There was quite a breeze, and I loved the way the outer tidepools divided between the textures of the water within and just outside.

The find of the day was a dead octopus! I have never seed a live octopus in a tidepool, and while that would have been cooler, this was pretty remarkable to see. I stared at the scene for quite a while as quite a few hermit crabs crawled around the suckers. The large red sea urchin appeared to be quite interested in octopus meat as well.

I think the anemone pictured above is a painted anemone (Urticina grebelnyi). Below is our very common giant green anemone.

tidepool immersion ~ not far off

Posted on July 14, 2022 by marybethrew

tidepool immersion ~ between scattered showers

Posted on February 15, 2022 by marybethrew

Between scattered showers, between the week-before-deadline and the deadline, I hit a lucky low tide. The sun came out and shined on the encrusting critters, the chitons decorated with barnacles and limpets, making the anemones look lit from within.

I see a selfie in this heart-shaped tidepool. Happy Valentine’s day!

Hermit crab, you are in the middle of a sea anemone. Not sure if you know.

tidepool immersion ~ brooding and homing

Posted on December 7, 2021 by marybethrew

At the conclusion of my 30 days of gratitude, a friend commented, “we see what we look for.” I have to agree that this is true with gratitude. It also seems to be startlingly true in tidepooling. But sometimes I don’t know what I’m looking for when I begin my walk.

In December, tidepooling becomes an extreme sport because the timing of the low low tides overlaps with the early evening darkness. Oh, and winter weather. Tidepooling in the dark and rain is not an adventure for everyone, but as much as I despise cold and darkness, this adventure had my name on it.

The air was chill as we cut across the exposed intertidal shelf, stepping carefully around deep limestone pools in our extratuff boots. Mist beaded up on my purple raincoat, scattering the beam of my headlamp in all directions, so I knelt beside a tidepool. Kelp and fish permeated the air as I leaned closer, focused my camera lens, trying not to block the light my headlamp provided, laughing at the futility of photography in the rainy darkness, but unable to resist giving it a try.

Here’s what I didn’t know I was looking for…

Brooding sea anemones (Epiactis prolifera)

All of them start off life as females. I was looking for females. I was looking for something that holds embryos in her mouth like so many words bubbling up, tumbling down column to pedal disk, to lodge in a fold of flesh and incubate and grow and become. I was looking for someone who encircles herself with her offspring, who knows about the departures as they start to crawl out into the world and live independent lives of their own.

Nudibranchs (Leopard Dorid – aka discodoris! and Monterey Dorid)

Reportedly, nudibranchs are a predator of anemones, and can incorporate the anemones’ stinging nematocyst cells into their own being for defense. I was looking for someone who could quarantine the weapons of others inside, not to continue to be hurt by them, but to repurpose as raw material for something that serves them better in the future.

Fluffy Sculpin Oligocottus snyderi

They swick their emerald fins in rocky pools from Baja to Alaska. They leave when conditions become inhospitable. When we say, “a fish out of water,” we mean someone out of their element, someone who has been befuddled, disabled by displacement. When displaced, when fluffy is a “fish out of water,” fluffy can still breathe. I was looking for that. I was looking for someone who would up and leave inhospitable conditions, and continue to breathe, unbefuddled.

On the other hand, fluffy sculpins exhibit homing behavior. When displaced, a fluffy sculpin can find its way back to its home tidepool. I was looking for homing, too.

Snailfish Liparis florae

A swish of yellow, a tiny apostrophe easily overlooked, soft-bodied and scaleless, a sucking disc for holding onto the rough rocks. I was looking for someone who could be among the roughness but remain soft, someone good at holding on.

Florae, named for Flora Hartley Greene, advocate for children and suffragette about whom I can read almost nothing. Obscure, dusty, writings leech the color and flavor out of both fish and woman, unobtainable references, her name misspelled, her story traceable only through that of her husband, the fish nerd of the family. I was looking for a tiny fish to remind me of forgotten women who fought for my rights: to vote and be my own woman, not subordinate to a man, no matter how wonderful my husband may be.

chiton under black light

Many tiny six-rayed sea stars twinkled white light as they clung to festive eelgrass tinsel flung about in energetic celebration. Baby stars, such a sign of hope after decade-long star famine. Rich surprised us all by pulling a black light flashlight out of his pocket. It belonged to his father. Bob used it to illuminate rocks and minerals, but we shined it into dim tidepools to find out that the night-emerging shrimp trim their fanning tails and waving antennae in glow-paint. We shined it and pastel anemones lit up the pools, brighter than ever they express themselves in daylight. We shined it to find out that hermit crabs are the most colorful party-goers attending the celebration, the algae covering their shells bright red, their claws neon green, Christmas crabs crawling across inky fields of blue and purple. I didn’t know I was looking for psychedelic hermit crabs.

hermit crab

tidepool immersion~blue inside

Posted on June 9, 2021 by marybethrew

(The photo above is from a different beach I visited on a grayer, less photogenic day, save for these colorful anemones.

All that follow are from a single tidepooling trip.)

On my recent tidepool walk, I found a fish lying on the sand. A large sculpin? I picked it up to take a picture (as one does). In my hand, its body shifted so that its mouth dropped open and I gazed into a gaping chasm of blue! Its mouth is blue?! Simultaneously, its opercula opened, closed, gasping. It was still alive!

I snapped quick photos and rushed it into the water. It lay on the bottom, letting water pour across its gills, brown lumpy body camouflaging its secret bright interior. At home, I looked it up: a cabezon, part of the true sculpin family, a rocky intertidal dweller who feeds on crabs, fish, and mollusks. In its blue inner realm – not just mouth, but also flesh and internal organs – tiny abalone shells are said to become brightly polished in its digestive acids. The cabezon spawns on rocks, where its eggs, poisonous for consumption, can disperse up to 200 miles from shore, drifting as embryos divide, develop, hatch into wiggling larvae, absorb their yolk sacs. Arriving back in their tidepool spawning ground as fry, they hunt and grow into adults who lurk in the kelp beds.

I walked to the farthest extent of the beach one can access, and then only on these lowest low tides. Actually, I stopped short of the farthest tippy tidepool at the end once I spotted hauled out seals, and ceased approaching. Took zoom lens photos of baby seals raising their heads and rear flippers like they were rehearsing their swim, strengthening their core muscles.

Discodoris sighting! aka Diaulula sandiegensis from family Discodorididae

I chose fishing line as my genre of litter to collect on this day, filled my pockets. Stepped across a vein of something agatized or fossilized. Made by pressure, revealed by water, without having to dig. The smooth light gray rock erodes pockets and dimples. The small black cobbles collect inside. On the farthest stretch, the crabs are less accustomed to having to hide from hikers, and they plop and tumble into tidepools, scuttle and skitter under eelgrass clumps.

Otter is the name of the beach I wandered, though the last known individual sea otter swimming in Oregon waters was shot off Newport in 1907. Locally extinct ever since, they no longer exert control over sea urchins, which can overgraze the kelp holding down the base of this ecosystem.

Other species help in the role of maintaining kelp forests, though none to the extent that otters once did. I leaned over every edge of every farthest shelf of rock on this day, hoping and wishing to see a sunflower star.

(Like the one Quinn is touching here in 2010.)

(Or this pair from 2011.)

But sunflower stars have reached critically endangered status as of December 2020, failing to make a comeback from sea star wasting disease. Locally extinct now in the southern part of its range (zero Mexico or California sightings since 2018), sightings in Oregon are now vanishingly rare. I have not been able to find one.

I did see a leather star, though, between meals of anemones. A number of purple and ochre sea stars wrapped around mussels. Some species are making a halting comeback, others not. They will pull on the threads that connect them to other species until a new equilibrium is reached.

Maybe it’s because I’ve just finished reading Into Great Silence, a memoir written by a woman who studied the Chugach transient orca pod in Prince William Sound, a diminishing group that has not reproduced since the Exxon Valdez emptied oil into the sound in 1989. There are now just seven individuals. Maybe it’s because the author, Eva Saulitis, included a quote from the poem The Last One by W.S. Merwin, so I read the rest of the poem. I think a lot about these last ones, the impossibly lonely condition of being a last one, that so many species are facing. And then the one is gone, and there are none. Maybe it’s because I felt like I discovered a kindred spirit in Eva as I read her book, and know that she, too, is gone. Or maybe I’m a cabezon. I’m just a little blue on the inside, too.

tidepool immersion ~ pink moon low tide

Posted on May 4, 2021 by marybethrew

Last week we enjoyed a very low minus tide series courtesy of the full, pink, willow moon. It was just setting when I arrived at my destination.

I met this hummingbird while tidepooling – a bit unusual for a tidepooling find!

I don’t often get photos of feather duster worms, so this was a special treat. Apparently they have giant nerve fibers that help them retract very quickly when disturbed, to avoid getting eaten. They also have light-sensitive eyespots on their gills so they can sense a predator by its shadow passing overhead!

As the sun started coming up over the ridge, the colors became so much more vibrant.

>crow’s feet<

the portal

Posted on March 12, 2021 by marybethrew

I reached the light at the end of the swim tunnel.

I continue to rise at 4:00 to write every day.

The portal is open, the ideas are flowing onto the page, I am diving under each wave and coming up breathless and ready for the next.

I have been accepted into the Mountainview low-residency MFA program in Creative Nonfiction.

This is just one of several amazing doors opened by taking a new step towards actively pursue my writing goals.

My mentor reminded us at the end of my first workshop that it’s necessary to write daily, but also to sometimes put down the laptop and go for that hike.

Which is wisdom I already embrace.

tidepool immersion ~ disco doris

Posted on October 2, 2020 by marybethrew

I have been thinking about posting some longer photo-heavy posts of some of my personal nature walks to share so that others can vicariously go along for the hike. These photos are from a tidepool walk on one of the last morning negative low tides of the season (y’all remember how I made my own college course on how the tides work back in January, right?) and I was having trouble choosing which photos would go into a rainbow monday post… so I decided to make them their very own post… virtual nature walk #1 tidepool immersion!

new nudi! ring-spotted doris whose scientific name Discodoris, beats the common name hands down. Disco Doris!

I am not sure what species this egg case belongs to… I’m thinking some kind of mollusk/snail?

~summer shorts~ reclaiming

Posted on July 28, 2020 by marybethrew

Have you seen me lately? is the title of one of my depression songs. I hardly ever listen to the Counting Crows anymore, but the feeling that I have gone missing lately is a little bit accurate.

When I go missing, when I need to retrieve myself, the ocean is where I go. During a pandemic, it may mean going to the ocean at 6:30 am on a Monday, and it may mean going less frequently, but the ocean is still where I go to collect myself and bring myself back. Here I am, standing, kneeling beside the crowded tidepools of my inner world. There beside them, soaking in the brine, is the end of a long strand of mended rope. I pick it back up in my hand, ready to start adding to the storyline, twisting new strands, threading on new beads and seashells, eventually stringing more cranberries and popcorn once it is a little less soggy.

How does it happen that I would ever set this rope down? I know better. I repeat to myself like a mantra why I write. I repeat it enough that others know it, can paraphrase it. The fragmentation that once characterized my inner experience was the result of mental health crisis – major depression brought on mostly by emotional abuse (gone), but also a little bit predisposition (still there). Fragmentation, a broken storyline, allowed me to lie to myself, disconnect from myself, betray myself, something I remain committed to never do again. Writing is my best tool to maintain a cohesive storyline, to integrate the various pieces of myself into one narrative that I can keep my grip on, so that I can see the connections between one segment and another, so that I can tell if I am being true to who I am and so that I can tell if I am deviating from my truth or forgetting crucial pieces of the story.

Too much slack in the line is a different problem from fragmentation, but tangles are not conducive to okayness either. Winds will blow on me, waves will continue to endlessly pass, and if I am not doing the steady, dynamic tending this line of mine requires, it can become knotted and snarled. These posts piling up behind the scenes, where I keep second guessing myself and saving to drafts, need to start being eased out before they accumulate further. Like the sheet that controls the business end of the sail, my line works to keep me on course, to keep the wind coming across my sails in the most efficient way to maintain forward progress, to keep me from capsizing, to keep the sails full not flogging, to keep me from wallowing in the doldrums.

There is a certain amount of tension required to keep ahold of myself, in other words. The danger is there to become too tense, to hold on rigidly, which can also rock the boat. When my shoulders start to reach my ears, my hands are clenched, and I am holding my breath too often, I need to loosen my grip, inhale, exhale, and observe what the ocean is doing. Take stock, adjust course.

You can sail forward even when the wind is close to your bow, but there is a reason why they call it “beating to windward.” Heading into the oncoming wind and seas (usually they are coming from a related direction to one another, though not always) can feel like a beating. The motion of the vessel is more jarring, the force of the impact coming down from the crest of each swell causes the whole hull to shudder and the rigging to vibrate, and the ship is heeled over at quite an angle. The ship must be tacked much more frequently to maintain course, an act which by its very nature strains every line and piece of hardware, every tired seam and joint. Changing direction frequently just to keep going forward is exhausting, and you must ensure the coffee pot is lashed in the galley, the deck gear all stowed.

Still, it is while sailing to windward that I have most often encountered dolphins riding the bow wake. It is also only in the dark of night that the bow wake glows with bioluminescence. Remembering my study of the word “streamlined” a couple of years ago, I recall my conclusion that the status of the flow around me has less to do with turbulence in my life, than what shape I present to the flow; that if I present less resistance to the flow, I have a more streamlined experience. Salmon use the energy of the current to propel themselves upstream; adversity is not a direct line to crisis, in fact it can be a force of energy that is harnessed for good.

I feel as though, right now, I am swimming upstream against a strong current, or sailing into a strong wind. I am okay, but I am on watch for signs of slipping down the current too far towards the waterfall’s edge, or letting the wind get around behind the wrong side of my sails. I am okay, but I am swimming hard with nothing in reserve, I am beating to windward and taking a beating. I am okay, but I am only okay because I know firsthand the consequences of slipping downstream, of capsizing.

At market one recent Saturday, a lovely woman handed me a bundle of braided sweetgrass. She grows it herself, and she said she wanted to give it to me because I inspire her. I am using it to smudge this space and reclaim it, to clear out any traces of energy that would keep me quiet, that would turn down my voice, that would ask me to be smaller, less than fully me.