Time and Tidal Pools

Sully Island, Wales

Unexpected childhood memories exploded around me as I checked the tide tables the other day. It was a kaleidoscope of memories: sailing with the tide; deciding how long we could sit on the beach; being able to walk around the point dry-shod; avoiding mythical jellyfish. But the most vivid flash-back was a recapitulation of my fear of being swept away when crossing the causeway to Sully Island.

This was - still is, I suppose - a somewhat romantically swan-neck shaped stretch of land that lies off my childhood coast. The causeway was exposed for a short time at  every low tide, providing a way to reach the island by foot, but with the turn of the tide the incoming water swept suddenly and fiercely through the narrow gap between land and island. Consequently, our mothers scared us silly with stories of children being swept away by the tide. The result of these stories was that my friends and I never actually dared to walk the causeway ourselves, so it remains to this day on my bucket list

No such worries, thank goodness, hung over me as I checked the tide tables for Cabrillo National Monument. I just wanted to be sure I’d be there when the rock pools were revealed. 

Limpets cling like - well -limpets!

 The pools provide a glimpse into another land, another life, more exotic than any Welsh island. It’s a glimpse of the underwater world of kelp and crabs, fish, limpets and anemones. A miscellany of these creatures is marooned twice daily in the rock pools of the Monument, which sits on Point Loma in San Diego, the southern tip of southern California.



 

Jewels among sand.

Magic spirals

 

 

 

 

Is there, I wondered, a panic in the underwater world as the tide begins to go out, a panic similar to ours at the thought of being swept away at Sully Island?  It’s SpongeBob scenario: “The tide is turning” whisper the hermit crabs, “Better scuttle out to sea”. “The tide is turning” gulp the anemones, “Better take cover”. “The tide is turning” burble the fish. “Don’t get caught – the tourists will ogle you!”

 And ogle I did – who could resist?



With a hundred others, I wandered and marveled at the creatures living at the edge of the Pacific. Life on the edge is always both exciting and dangerous. Rock pool and causeway, both are ever-changing, ephemeral, and sometimes explosive, like childhood memories.



Life on the edge: a boulder sits on the very brink of the Pacific.