"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
Philosophically profound, but not very practical... take your eyes off the waves for a few seconds and next thing you know, you and your fancy (but not impervious) camera are soaked. Since tide pools exist where rocky outcroppings trap water, to explore them and their contents properly, you have to clamber up wet and slimy rocks covered in sharp mollusks. One miscalculated step or a particularly large wave and you're cold, wet, and potentially injured if you sprain an ankle or cut yourself on a sharp edge. I also did not have great footwear for this trek - flip flops, the only "shoes" I had in my collection that I was willing to get sandy and wet. You could definitely pick apart the casual visitors from the frequent tide pool explorers... they were all properly shod with what I will call "hiking sandals" or just straight up hiking boots. And after 3 hours of trying to maintain my balance on rocks in flip flops, small muscles in my feet are definitely making their presence known.
I really wonder how professional nature photographers (a la National Geographic) manage to get such amazing shots. Wildlife generally are not very cooperative in holding interesting poses and when you move to compose a shot, they move away. Additionally, timing for natural light and ideal conditions is a truly an exercise in tactical planning. I've been wanting to photograph tide pools for almost a month now, but it took until today to hit the quadfecta of low tide, indirect light, not a million degrees out, and minimal traffic and people to get in my way. And to manage that, I still had to set my alarm for 5am on a Saturday to get there by low tide at 6:53am. Alternatively, I could have waited until 7:24pm, but there definitely would have been more people and low tide at that point would have been at 2.2' instead of the 0.6' it was this morning and I probably would have seen less with more of the shore being covered in water.
All in all, still totally worth it. Tide pools are so fascinating - temporal biospheres with flora and fauna that are exposed during low tide. These organisms have to be hardy to withstand the pounding surf, exposure to the sun, and hungry predators for extended periods of the day. Crystal Cove also had some volunteer docents who were able to tell me more about the plants and animals, which was an unexpected bonus to my morning. They were surprised I knew a lot more about tide pools than the typical layperson, but I credit that to a marine biology class I happened to take as an undergrad and multiple visits to the Monterey Bay Aquarium when I lived up in NorCal.
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| Tide pools |
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| Pounding waves |
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| Anemone |
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| A shore crab |
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| A fat 6-legged starfish and a completely oblivious seagull above |
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| The tide, starting to come in |
More from today at: http://thisgirlelle.smugmug.com/Photography/Tide-Pools/30521504_FrwHsZ
Hours to Date: 24
