The Tide Is Out

Tide Pooling, Science, and Questions of Why

“Finally we learned to know why we did these things. The animals were very beautiful. Here was life from which we borrowed life and excitement. In other words, we did these things because it was pleasant to do them.”

Log from the Sea of Cortez

I have often wondered why I love tide pooling. It is a rather niche activity and few beyond my close family and friends even know what I am talking about when my nerdy hobby comes up. If you are reading this blog, chances are you are interested in tide pooling, perhaps as one might be interested in reading biographies of the U.S. presidents or crocheting in their spare time. Or perhaps you are an avid tide pooler and have spent lots of time and money, put lots of miles on your car, and lost lots of sleep for your hobby. 

It used to be that only ones in the tide pools were scientists or wealthy amateurs. But such is not the case anymore; tide pooling is accessible to most able bodied people with access to transportation and some free time. 

I do not know why you tide pool or are interested in tide pooling; I sometimes struggle to answer the question for myself. I am not a scientist. My search for the rare organisms or photography of the common ones serve little purpose to science or the greater community. I do not make money from tide pooling or my writings about it. Rather my hobby demands much of my time and resources and often deprives me of sleep. Yet I still do it.

The quote at the beginning of this post is from Log from the Sea of Cortez by the famous author John Steinbeck and his friend, the ecologist Ed Ricketts. The narrative catalogs their six week journey to Baja California collecting intertidal life in the 1940s. While the official purpose of their trip was to collect and preserve animals for science, they are repeatedly asked by the local indigenous peoples in Mexico why they were “picking up and pickling little animals.” This was asked out of simple curiosity. The men find that “for the advancement of science” is not an adequate answer, as it is met with “Why? What is it advancing toward?” They eventually realize that they do these things simply because they liked to do them.

I have learned to relate to this, despite having ambitions of my own. Ricketts and Steinbeck wanted to create a catalog of the previously undocumented flora and fauna in the gulf. I have hopes to greatly contribute to tide pooling resources and expand ecological knowledge of the rocky intertidal. I, too, want to catalog the creatures that live in this habitat through photography and encourage conservation and proper tide pooling etiquette. But if someone asked my why I do this, I wouldn’t list these official-sounding justifications for what I do. “Here is life from which I borrow life and excitement,” Steinbeck says, and in it I find why I do these things, why I started tide pooling in the first place: 

The animals are very beautiful and these things are pleasant to do.