Tides and Trails

How do you know you’re a beachcombing geek? When you stop to stare at a kelp holdfast on a beach for so long you arrive late to a meeting--that's a sign. Oh, and if you know what a “holdfast” is, that’s a pretty good sign, too. For the uninitiated, a holdfast anchors kelp to rocks, similar to how root systems hold plants in place. Unlike roots, however, holdfasts don't take in water and nutrients. Kelp look similar to plants but are a large form of algae (macroalgae). Phytopl

The day before Typhoon Songda hammered the coast, I went to Oswald West to survey the scene. From atop what I've dubbed the Cliffs of Insanity, the Pacific looked as placid as a pond. Around noon, a wall of clouds rose in the west, and ripples formed on the ocean. The wind picked up; ripples turned to whitecaps. The sun disappeared. What happened next made national news; the tornado that ravaged Manzanita will be recorded in history books. The Cliffs of Insanity would have pr

I'm scrambling to explore every cove, beach, and headland of Ecola State Park before the whole coastline slumps into the sea. Last winter was one of the rainiest on record, and Ecola, one of the most spectacularly beautiful places on the planet, was beset by landslides, collapsing roads, trail damage, and downed trees. Today, while running through the remnants of a typhoon, I watched erosion in real time: geologic change not in eons but in each blast of wind, in every towerin

The blue skies and calm seas of a few days ago were beautiful, but as soon as a stable weather system settles over the region, I start craving the next storm. The postcard prettiness of sunlit water pales compared to a typhoon's dark potency. The Pacific was anything but pacific today--the ocean became a seething cauldron whipped by hurricane-force winds. While running on the dunes behind my home in Cannon Beach, a tornado touched down in Manzanita, about fifteen miles to the

"An abstract, intellectual understanding of deep time comes easily enough—I know how many zeros to place after the 10 when I mean billions. Getting it into the gut is quite another matter." —Stephen Jay Gould, Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle By scraping algae from rocks with tiny, file-like teeth, periwinkle snails, Littorina spp., can deepen tidepools almost half an inch in sixteen years. Imagining a small mollusk as an agent of geologic change primes us to consider planetary pro

At the ocean’s edge, competition for food and space is fierce. But the intertidal zone also serves up stunning examples of cooperation. From an octopus cannibalizing its mate to a sea star attacking a mussel, conflicts among ocean creatures hook our attention. Small wonder: Every compelling story ever told has been driven by conflict, from sagas spun around campfires to the space opera of Star Wars. Examples of people cooperating rarely make the news, much less lead to litera

When I travel into the tidelands, the moon is often on my mind. Without the moon, there would be no sea slugs attacking hydroids, no sculpins ambushing amphipods. Nor would there be a sentient mammal at the ocean’s edge to witness these spectacles. Recently, from a little boy obsessed with space, I learned that scientists have identified a second moon orbiting Earth. The boy shouted about this discovery while racing away from an ocean wave. Then he turned and sprinted toward

Between tidepooling sessions I’ve been reading about Proxima b, a newly discovered planet orbiting the star closest to our sun. Good news: this planet in our galactic backyard is just slightly larger than Earth, meaning it is more likely a rocky world similar to our own planet than a gas giant like Jupiter. More good news: Proxima b is in the Goldilocks zone. Not too cold for its water to freeze, not too hot for its water to turn to gas, Proxima b orbits its star at just the