Tidal pools contain their own microcosms of the world.

When I lived near the ocean as a girl, one of my favorite things to do would be to hunt for tidal pools. The most exciting ones were those teeming with life, vegetative or marine or both, where I could watch creatures pop their heads out of the barnacle shelters or crabs wobble to one side as they ascended a climb. The kelp & seaweed undulating with the gentle movement of the briny water, as the tiniest fish would dart around avoiding the shadow of my outstretched arm.

Small coves proffered the best treasures.

If you wait for the right time of day, your odds of finding a miniature ecosystem improves. There’s an art to traversing the rocks, searching for just the right spot where the rock has eroded in just the perfect shape & the tide comes in just so far to support the best conditions. The amount of sunlight, water current as it pushes in towards shore, & the pull from the receding tide when it hits its low–all of these things affect tidal pools in different ways.

Most often, you’ll find seaweed & barnacles as staples in New England tidal pools.

An avid sea-creature hunter, I’d inspect pools at a distance to judge which ones might give me the best results, before scrambling over boulders & mounds to get to each. The pool had to have enough potential to entice me, had I only limited time (which depended on my parents’ moods, that day). If pools showed promise, I’d beg my parents to let me explore.

One of the fascinating aspects of studying tidal pools is seeing how creatures live inside the shells you tended to collect on the shore.

So many kinds of things lived in those tidal pools, & still do for the most part (aside from the effects of global warming). The rarer the creatures the more excited I’d become. The carapaces of horseshoe crabs appeared almost alien-like, so foreign on the beach that to find one alive seemed an incredible feat. And to catch sight of a live seahorse? That would be the ultimate jackpot for me.

Rarely would you find a horseshoe crab intact, let alone alive.

When we went on a family trip to Eleuthera, Bahamas, I spent hours inspecting the tidal pools of the Caribbean. I’m sure I drove everyone nuts with my fixation on searching rocks & beach for sealife and shells. There were very different sides of the island, since one abutted the Atlantic Ocean while the other met the Caribbean. Different colors of sand correlated to the beaches of each.

There I am, an adult, still searching tidal pools just as I had as a kid.

In my undergraduate studies, my required science course with a lab was oceanography. We went on fieldtrips to check bathymetry, & we’d study major trenches to see how they aligned with faultlines to make up the shapes of the earth’s tectonic plates. We’d study currents & salinity, estuaries & phenomena like El Niño. We went to Woods Hole to see research scientists at work. My culminating research paper focused on bioluminiscence, which still fascinates me. I loved every minute of that course.

My shadow as I climbed on rocks in Eleuthera to hunt for tidal pools.

The ocean speaks to me. It always has. My favorite books, like The Awakening or Tender Is the Night, often held maritime themes or were set near or on the ocean. My favorite places in the world involve the ocean, which is why when I was recently asked to recommend favorite books as summer reading all of my choices were set on the ocean. Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier is great to read by the ocean for that reason. I’m planning to read it again.

Beach-combing, shell collecting, looking for sand dollars & starfish, finding different colored sea glass, picking up driftwood. These are things I love to do. I practically had a whole bag of shells I brought back from the Bahamas.

Conch shells in Eleuthera.

My hope is to pass along the gift of the ocean spray & excitement of the tidal pool hunt on to my son, just a toddler now. He already loves the water. Time will tell if he will share the same passion for the sea as I.

My hope is to share my love of all things oceanic with my child.