Tide Pooling

(Look at my fun waterproof boots.)

If you ever are offered the opportunity to muck about in a tide pool, I recommend it. We spent over two hours traipsing around, poking under rocks, and lifting up kelp deposits. Susan was kind enough to loan me a pair of waterproof boots, and I stayed dry and warm even while wading through knee-deep water. I also saw the best side of the other teachers-helping each other find the critters we were searching for, holding out hands as a stabilizing force for people whose feet were less sure, and modeling curiosity about all of the creatures we came across. There was at least one abalone, a few fish, a fair number of crustaceans, an overwhelming number of anemones, and millions of jelly-type animals that we didn't always recognize on our own as alive.

(That large gray object on the right is actually a colonial tunicate. I reached my hand in the water to use it to poke the jelly substance immediately to the left, and it was soft. Just about everything you see here is alive.)

(This octopus shouldn't have been in the intertidal. It's now in Gilly's cephalopod lab.)

Steinbeck and Rickett's used to go collecting in the tide pools around Monterey. Reading my post about writing and Cannery Row, you might also remember the the metaphor of a tide pool is the essential metaphor for Cannery Row throughout the book. At our lecture preparing us for the experience, the scientist discussed the importance of looking slowly at details instead of surveying the vistas. This goes against human inclinations, and he challenged us to spend 5 minutes at two different times staring quietly at the same tide pool. The animals living in the pools can feel our approach, sense our shadows, and taste our presence in the water. They need time to adjust to us, and we notice more as we watch the interactions that unfold under the water.

(Bird rock that's appeared in the distance in many of my photos. 6am was the low-low tide of the day.)

(You can see better here how far out we walked.)

Tidepools are also a metaphor for Steinbeck's writing on a larger scale. He cared about symbiosis in communities, and the ways that different species rely on each other. Both he and Ricketts challenged the status quo of organizing (sterilized preserved) animals by phylum, categorization and instead found value in observing living communities. You can see this theme of community design and survivability in all of his fiction and nonfiction writings. Steinbeck observed communities, human and aquatic, in their natural environments, and he let their actions speak for themselves.