Monday, May 5, 2008

My Town Monday: San Diego Tide Pools


A very, very fun and inexpensive and educational San Diego activity is a trip to the tide pools. Our favorite tide pools are located on the rocky shoreline by Cabrillo National Monument in Point Loma. The address is: 1800 Cabrillo Memorial Drive, San Diego, CA 92106-3601

The tide pools are protected, so you can't take anything home with you. Don't even try to slip a shell or stone in your pocket. We take our ecosystems very seriously here in SoCal which is why there are rangers around. They'll help you identify what you're looking at and poking. But they're also kind of policing the area. In a friendly way.

The tide pool area is divided into four different zones, depending on how much of the land is covered by water. For example, the low intertidal zone is where the beach is covered by water 90% of the time. Then there's the middle intertidal zone which is only underwater 50% of the time. Next comes the high intertidal zone which is underwater 10% of the time. Finally, there's the splash zone.

Some creatures you might see are hermit crabs, sea anemones, sea cucumbers, star fish, owl limpets, eels, sea urchins, bat stars, sea hares, maybe even an octopus. And more.


sea anemone


Tide pools are best explored at low tide. There are two low tides a day. Even better, aim for a minus tide when the most beach is exposed. Minus tides occur in the winter. You can call this number for tide time: 619-5450 Ext. 0. Or this tide chart site is supposed to be accurate all year long for tide times.

Plan to get wet at the tide pools. Wear shoes with decent traction. The rocks get very slippery. Unfortunately, I speak from experience.


sea cucumber


sea bat

(From: http://www.hribar.com/san-diego-tides.html,http://www.aroundandaboutsandiego.com/pltidepools.html,http://gorp.away.com/gorp/publishers/foghorn/hik_sca2.htm)

My Town Monday comes to us via Travis Erwin. Thanks, Travis! Click on his site to read his post about Charles Goodnight and find links to the other participants.

34 comments:

  1. I love your Monday Posts!!!!
    I so want to come for a visit...can I crash at your place and use you as a tour guide?!?!?!?!?

    You can come visit Ottawa any time!

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  2. what a great place to live....lucky, lucky, lucky!!!

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  3. Oh Barrie, you make it sound so wonderful. I want to visit the tide pools!! And I promise - my clothes will be sans pockets, so I cannot/will not take anything home with me. :-)

    ~Debbie

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  4. I haven't been to a tide pool in years, but I remember how interesting they are, and how slippery the rocks can be! Pt. Loma is a beautiful place. I love the light house on the cliff.

    Linda

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  5. I love tide pools and the beach--well, mainly looking at stuff on the beach, not so much the bathing suit thing ;-) Those are wonderful photos!

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  6. Very cool. We are taking a trip to the beach in June, and I'm very much looking forward to it!!

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  7. Oh I am so jealous! I would love to go there. Nice post!

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  8. The tide pools on the Oregon coast were such a fun place to take my kids when they were younger! You gotta love free, cheap, education!

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  9. anything near the coastline sounds fabulous right about now!

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  10. My absolutely favorite book as a kid was "Pagoo" about a Hermit crab that starts out life in a tidal pool. Cool pics.

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  11. "0" tide, what a phenomenon! But, since the tides daily movement affects, what influence does the "0" tide have?

    Wonderful pictures too, Barrie.

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  12. The tide pools look cool. I have a sea urchin-- until hubby shaves, that is. =)

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  13. Gorgeous pictures and such a great place for kids of all ages.

    Terrie

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  14. That looks like a blast! I'll have to check that out. I don't actually know what a tide pool is (*blush*), but it really looks cool.

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  15. Very interesting! I would love to see that! Thanks so much for sharing!

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  16. I love tide pools. We go and poke about ourselves. For the record- you are sooo right on the importance of shoes with good traction. I'm pretty sure I scared the heck out of a starfish who saw my butt coming down quick onto him. Fortunately for him (and me- can you imagine the trauma?) I managed to avoid falling onto him and landed merely on the rock.

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  17. Now, I HAVE to go there! Super cool!

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  18. I obviously need to be hanging out here!! I LOVE tide pools. And I LOVE San Diego. I'm from a little ways north of you (Redondo Beach), but this post makes me homesick!

    Thanks for visiting my blog. And I'll be back!

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  19. As always your My Town Monday is fascinating and makes me want to visit Southern California. Tidal Pools are such fun and I'm so glad that your Beach Rangers do a great job protecting them. I once came away from a beach in Galway with half the granite and shells of the West Coast of Ireland in my daughter's pockets. I shudder to think what kind of damage she could've wrought on a tidal pool eco-system.

    Great Photos by the way. So you can spell anemone - but can you say it? I can't!

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  20. Very cool pics!!

    The address is: 1800 Cabrillo Memorial Drive, San Diego, CA 92106-3601

    I love that in California even the tide pools have an address and Zip Code! :-)

    Keep up the good work!

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  21. My kids would love this! How beautiful!

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  22. Tide pools are sooo cool. Sea bat? I never heard that name before. That's not a starfish? Beautiful pictures and the stuff in your So Cal tide pools is a lot prettier than the stuff I used to goof around with in tide pools on Cape Cod.

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  23. I love looking in the pools, there are loads of interesting 'things' in them. My kids also like to catch crabs off of the pier and chuck them back in again afterwards!!

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  24. Wouldn't those be weird if they were land creatures? Oh, yes they would.

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  25. Boy, did the photos and your description bring back memories. My old sneakers always, even today, have a hole in the toe, and those were the ones I wore to the tidepools--all through California and down into Mexico--when I was a kid. The water would gush into the hole and tickle my feet.

    We touched way too many sea anemones and took too many shells, I'm sure. I'm glad they've figured out today that it's not a good thing. :)

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  26. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a sea bat

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  27. My boys spent hours exploring tide pools in Hawaii. They absolutely loved them...I'm thinking we need to add San Diego to our list of destinations. The pictures are wonderful.

    Heidi

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  28. As Lyzzydee said - we have rock pools over here in the UK - the most exciting thing is really to find a crab - no sea anemones here - they are beautiful !

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  29. I would LOVE to go there with my husband and kids. That looks so amazing! What fun it must be to look around. We may go to California this summer, I will have to look into this.
    XOXO

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  30. mmm, I so very much love the tide pools. Its one of the things I miss and wish I could share with my kids. After moving from So. Cal to NJ it was frustrating to only have the shore and no great pools. I'm very jealous. (thanks for visiting my blog Easy Green Living!)

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Comments are always welcome!