Star- and Shell- Fish Wednesday: Low Tide Edition

We don’t always dish up a plate of seafood for Fish Wednesday, sometimes, we actually put on our shoes and go look at fish in some kind of habitat. We are unspeakably lucky to be near Lincoln Park, a beautiful stretch of beach (and more) – it takes 20 minutes to walk from our front door to the edge of Puget Sound. And at this time of year, we live for the low tide days. The extreme low tides, like today’s, expose sea life we don’t usually get to look at or poke, I mean, um, gently, very gently of course, so gently as to be almost unnoticeable, I swear. (Kids, don’t poke the sea life, okay? Plus, some of it is toxic, no joke.)

On days when the tide is way out there, the Seattle Aquarium sends naturalists down to the beach to talk to the sea life poking visitors, sharing knowledge about what lives out there, telling us not to poke the sea life, and generally making us all a little smarter. Thanks to their help, I now know something about the Moon Snail, a big critter with a shell about the size of a baseball and a body that looks “like a giant wad of snot” according to the friendly guy that helped us understand our underwater neighbors. I also learned that those things you see everywhere are not “plungers washed up from a freighter that tipped over in the sound.” They’re actually moon snail eggs mixed with sand – they’re laid that way to create a sturdier, less appetizing place for the eggs to mature.

We saw chitons and several different kinds of sea stars, including the squishy orange ones with a zillion legs, anenomes that looked like someone hacked up an organ right there on the beach, big red crabs that would have made an excellent dinner had the gulls not got to them first, loads of rock clinging barnacle type things from very flat ones to pointy three dimensional ones…and that’s just the squishy sea life.

Birds were plentiful, tossing sea star legs around (it’s brutal at low tide), feeding on the tiny fish and shrimp that didn’t get the memo about clearing out before the tide turned, and generally feasting on the salad bar of the tidal zone. We even saw an otter scamper out of the water, hightail it across the beach, and disappear into the brush just the other side of the seawall. There was talk along the beach of an octopus sighting – Puget Sound is home to one of the largest species of octopus – and two legged critters, mostly of the smaller sized squealing with enthusiasm variety – were everywhere.

It’s a true wonder to get out there and see the breathtaking variety of nature in all it’s sticky, salty splendor. Low tide is high on the list of my hundreds of favorite things about West Seattle, even when the weather is less than ideal. It looks like the next super low minus tides are the first three days of July – if you want to join us for turning over rocks, peeling back seaweed, and generally oohing and aahing over the wonders of water dwelling critters, just drop me a line. Afterwards, we’ll go for treats at the Original Bakery down by Endolyne Joe’s.

A few more pics here. And the King County website has some pics of chitons and snails in Puget sound here.