Tidepooling tomorrow at Abalone Cove

I've previously blogged on and on about tidepooling in Abalone Cove.  Tomorrow, we'll have another low-tide opportunity to putter around the tidepools and visit critters in their rocky homes.  Meet at the Abalone Cove State Park parking lot at 1:00 pm for a docent-led hike.  Wear sturdy walking shoes that you don't mind getting wet and bring a towel for drying off and a water bottle.

February 24, 2013 (1:00 pm) ~ Join the Los Serenos docents on a public hike to the tide pools at Abalone Cove Shoreline Park (the parking fee will be waived up to 45 minutes prior to the hike and 30 minutes after).

View the daily tide predictions for LA.

This is a very fun activity for kids and the young at heart.  And, tomorrow, the rangers are providing free parking.

Did I mention that whales and dolphins frolic offshore from the tidepools?  Today, the whale-spotters saw 9 whales and much breaching activity, including synchronized breaching (like synchronized swimming, only on a much larger scale).

Message from the observers: One of our northbound pairs there was rolling and the side of the flukes. They milled for a while and their blows were backlit by the setting sun so their blows were pink in color. On two occasions they synchronized their fluke up dives - very pretty. Three of our five sightings were large whales that fluked; this included our southbound whales. FIN whales were seen throughout the day. We counted over eight whales, there were five in just one group. There was one whale that had a "massive blow", but no one used a scope to see if it was a FIN whale or a BLUE whale. Also seen were COMMON, BOTTLENOSE and PACIFIC WHITE-SIDED dolphins. There were a series of three green flashes that each turned blue at the end. We have taken to augmenting the viewing of the green flashes by using our scopes.

Tide Pooling 2012

Oops. While I was gearing up for and staffing the Wellness Fair, I postponed looking at the tide tables. It looks like our family missed a wonderful opportunity this weekend. The mid-afternoon low tide reached -1.4 (1.4 feet below mean low tide). Whenever the low tide reaches about -1.0 or below, the tide pools at Abalone Cove are exposed.

Photo courtesy of Steve Wolfe's slideshow of Abalone Cove.

If you had gone this weekend, the weather would have been windy, chilly and you might even have experienced intermittent rain showers. However, the tide pool denizens are more likely to be active in cold and damp weather than on hot, sunny days.

Hardy folks who went yesterday might even have been treated to the sight of TWO WHALES BREACHING SIMULTANEOUSLY. From the ACS/LA logbook for 21 Jan 2012:

As of 21 JAN 2012

Southbound Today --------------- 17
Northbound Today ---------------- 0
Total Whales Today ------------- 17
Southbound Calves Today --------- 0
Northbound Calves Today --------- 0

Season to Date (since 1 Dec 2011)

Southbound -------------------- 472
Northbound ---------------------- 5
Total ------------------------- 477
Calves South ------------------- 16
Calves North -------------------- 0

Message from the observers: High winds and BREACHING gray whales! Two different whales were breaching at the same time: one breached four times, and the other breached once. A short time later, another whale breached three times; we actually found this whale when it first breached. We saw flukes on three of the ten sightings. All sightings were within a mile offshore; one was just beyond the kelp line. We also spotted a large pod of common dolphin. The day ended with a series of three green flashes; the last flash turned blue at the end.

The Los Angeles Chapter of the American Cetacean Society takes their census of the near-shore migratory route from the patio of the Palos Verdes Interpretive Center. Local newspapers had reported an unprecedented number of whales sighted in the early season. (No one can tell if this is a shift toward an earlier migration or a shift in routes or an increase in total whale population.)

Our family stopped by Point Vicente on our way home last weekend with our binoculars. The whale census taker on duty said that she had only seen two whales that day. We did see countless birds of many varieties, a large pod of cavorting dolphins just beyond the kelp line and two sea lions lazing on the rocks.

There's still plenty of good whale watching opportunities this year. And there will be another good tide pooling opportunity at Abalone Cove the weekend of February 18-19, 2012.

More info:

• NOAA Tide Predictions General
  
• NOAA Tide Predictions California
• NOAA Tide Predictions King Harbor, Santa Monica Bay (near Abalone Cove)
• Abalone Cove Shoreline Park
• Point Vicente Interpretive Center (great place for whale watching from shore)
• Tie-dye Family at PVIC
• Past tidepooling posts
• ACS/LA Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project
  

The Big Stink

Last night, our city was beset by millions of visitors that mysteriously turned belly up and died. Was it something we said?
Read the story in the LAT (source of the above photo).

The explanation is that the fish tried to take shelter from the high winds last night in the harbor. There were so many fish that the ones that they ran out of oxygen. First the ones pushed to the shallow waters asphyxiated. There was simply no way out for them. Then the decomposing fish fed a bacterial bloom, further depleting oxygen, and the wave of death moved outwards into the middle of the marina.

I can believe it. The winds were ferocious last night.

Here's the jet-stream analysis visualization courtesy of CRWS, California Regional Weather Server. CRWS gets the data from NCEP, the National Center for Environmental Prediction.

Last November, Iris and I visited the nearby tidepools of Abalone Cove. A small school of small fish were caught in the shallows. I enjoyed watching their schooling behavior. When I tried to record it, the kids became very interested and started stomping around, drastically altering the fish behavior. Imagine if they are this frightened of kids, how they would react to the large waves we had last night.



Anyway, these are the kind of small fish that live offshore. Their abundance was the reason a pod of 50-80 blue whales tarried for nearly a month off our coast last September.

In the video, that's my kid screaming, "the sea anemone is going to eat the fish!" One fish had already been so severely weakened, that it was too weak to escape the tentacles of a sea anemone. She tried to save the little fish with a flick, but sent the fish into the grasp of a sea urchin instead. She was crushed, but I told her that it was too late for the fish, no matter what she did.

Then she started singing a song about the cycle of life. Or was it the circle of life? As they say in Tanzania, hakuna matata.

There are lots more pictures and stories in the tidepooling series.

The BBC video and story about this recent fish die-off shows the magnitude of the clean-up effort.

I am glad that the fish will be turned into fertilizer. It sounds like they were taken to the same place as the contents of our green (waste) bins. Our city parks are going to be very sufficiently fertilized this year. Unfortunately, tax receipts from the marina will be down as long as the smell persists, right at the time we have to pay for the cleanup. So come by and spend some money this summer, OK?

Ring in the new year at a tidepool!

I am sure that you can't get enough of your kids and don't feel a need to get them out of the house. But, if you are a bad mom like me, you might want to divert them for a while from their electronic toys.  Why not take them out to the clamber about on dangerous and slippery wet rocks?  Throw in some big waves that might drag them out to sea.  With any luck, they might not come home with you.

See the full list of tidepooling posts for more pictures of what you can see at Abalone Cove Shoreline Park.  The tide pools there are exposed whenever the low tide is -1.0 or more feet below the mean low tide.  (0 means the low tide that day is the same as the annual mean low tide.)  The NOAA 2009 and 2010 tide tables for Los Angeles yielded this information.

12/29/2009 Tue 01:59PM LST -1.1 L

12/30/2009 Wed 02:40PM LST -1.5 L

12/31/2009 Thu 03:21PM LST -1.7 L

01/01/2010 Fri 04:00PM LST -1.7 L

01/02/2010 Sat 04:42PM LST -1.5 L

01/03/2010 Sun 05:24PM LST -1.1 L

01/26/2010 Tue 01:03PM LST -0.7 L

01/27/2010 Wed 01:42PM LST -1.3 L

01/28/2010 Thu 02:21PM LST -1.6 L

01/29/2010 Fri 02:58PM LST -1.8 L

01/30/2010 Sat 03:35PM LST -1.6 L

01/31/2010 Sun 04:12PM LST -1.3 L

02/01/2010 Mon 04:48PM LST -0.8 L

02/26/2010 Fri 01:54PM LST -1.3 L

02/27/2010 Sat 02:29PM LST -1.3 L

02/28/2010 Sun 03:03PM LST -1.1 L

This is our lucky week because the west coast of the US is experiencing some of our lowest daylight tides of the year and school is out!

Don't live in LA?  No problem.  NOAA has the tide tables for the entire US right here.

Here's a blurb I wrote for Iris' school newsletter:

Tidepooling with Kids at Abalone Cove

Did you know we live near one of the best tide pool areas in California?  The tide pools of Abalone Cove, near Point Vicente on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, are exposed whenever the tide is 1 foot below mean lower low water (low tide).  These especially low tides occur during daylight hours mainly in the winter months.

If you look at the NOAA tide tables for Los Angeles, you will see that tides lower than    -1.0 (feet below mean low tide) rarely occur during daylight hours. Yet, those are the only conditions that expose the tidepools at Abalone Cove Shoreline Park. Take a look at the gorgeous photos in Steve's slide show.

The park is a nice place for a picnic any day of the year.  But, on days with especially low tides, it pays to get there at least an hour or two before the lowest tide time.  This ensures enough time to park and walk down to the rocks.  (Get there even earlier and you will have time for a picnic before scrambling on the rocks.)

The highest tide pools will become exposed about an hour before the minimum tide, and you can watch the sea anemones close as the water recedes.  As peak low tide approaches, more and more sea creatures will become exposed to view.  Our family has found octopuses, sea hares, limpets, mussels, sea urchins, sea stars, brittle stars, sea worms, hermit crabs, and myriad birds and sea plants.

Wear sturdy shoes that can get wet.  The rocks can get slippery so you want to wear shoes with a good grip.  Protect your family from the sun with hats and long-sleeved shirts, but leave the chemical sunscreens at home.  Those contain chemicals that make the sea creatures sick.

You can find more info about Abalone Cove from the park website:

http://www.palosverdes.com/rpv/recreationparks/AbaloneCoveShoreline/index.cfm

Park admission is $5 per car; this is a cheap excursion if you carpool.

Abalone Cove is a protected area, and it has made a little bit of a recovery since the 1970s from the heavy pollution in that area.  But the tide pools are in jeopardy from poachers and ocean acidification from increased CO₂ levels.  Don’t miss this opportunity to show your children this ecosystem while we still have it.

“Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footsteps.”

What we saw at Abalone Cove

Grandma Ann pointed out this sea hare.
What's this?
The colorful underside of a giant keyhole limpet.
The other side of a giant keyhole limpet (not the same one).
Sea urchin and coral skeletons.
Sea star.
A sea urchin condo complex.

Wave motion.

Why do they call it Abalone Cove?

I've been slow at blogging this, because it was so depressing. We went tidepooling with Grandma Ann and three of Iris' playmates. Everyone was asking, "Why don't we see any octopus today?"

The answer is this man. See that metal rake in his hand?
He poked it under rocks, not caring about his trail of destruction.

He flushed out an octopus under this rock. This was the only octopus we saw that day.

The rest of the octopodes must already be in his cooler. We also saw them put a brittlestar in there.

They also brought equipment to strip mine the marine sanctuary of fish, mussels and clams.

Ann and I tried to stop them, but they wouldn't listen. The parents spoke Mandarin with an accent I couldn't place. Later, I found the boy alone and talked to him. He said that his family had moved from China recently. He wouldn't tell me where he lives now, nor where in China they came from.

I asked if if he ever went tidepooling in China.

"No."

"Why not?"

"The ocean is too polluted with oil and garbage."

"Is there any wildlife?"

"No, because everyone has already taken it all."

I couldn't get a good picture of their faces because they kept turning away. They clearly knew that they were doing something wrong. I don't think they can plead the language ignorance defense. The boy spoke excellent English and could have explained it to his parents. Several onlookers tried to explain it to them, and the boy could have translated, if he cared.

We called the park ranger (back at the gate), and he said he called California Fish & Game, but they didn't respond in time. I watched the family climb up the cliff side trail ahead of me. Then they cut off cross-country up to the road. I was not surprised that they were happy to speed up cliff erosion to dodge the park ranger at the gate ($5 per car entrance fee). I wearily trudged up the trail to the parking lot and told the park ranger they got away.

Abalone Cove Shoreline Park is a marine preserve. No collecting of marine life is allowed, even if you have a fishing license. As long as I am in a scolding mood, no dogs allowed.

Is there any wonder there are no abalones left at a place called Abalone Cove?

Addendum:
A PVIC docent who was not there that day, sent along this information:

Existing Marine Protected Areas in California: Regulations
See: http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/mpa_regs.asp

The areas listed below are marine protected areas that currently exist
in California State waters. This list includes the Central Coast
Marine Protected Areas, which went into effect on September 21, 2007.

Abalone Cove State Marine Park

SPECIES PROHIBITED For Recreational Take
All marine aquatic plants; All invertebrates

Invertebrate is a kind of animal that does not have a spinal column or backbone.
Includes worms, Squids, octopuses, Snails, sea shells and slugs
Most shellfish; clams, oysters, scallops, mussels,
Echinoderms — starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, crabs
Porifera — sponges
Cnidarians — jellyfish
Platyhelminthes — flatworms
Nematoda — roundworms
Annelida — segmented worms
Bryozoa — sea mats or moss animals

SPECIES ALLOWED For Recreational Take
Finfish

Ocean Acidification

Many people we met at the tide pools talked about the changes they have seen in their lifetime. Some talked about the relative abundance of marine wildlife relative to the 1970s, when many environmental protection laws were put in place. Others complain of a dearth of biodiversity and marine life in general relative to 50 years ago.

I grew up tide pooling in Half Moon Bay, on the San Mateo coast, so I don't know the longer history of marine life in the Santa Monica Bay. However, I do feel an urgency to show Iris tide pools whenever the opportunity presents itself because I fear she will not be able to show them to her children. Why?

Ocean acidification due to the huge amounts of carbon dioxide we are pumping into the atmosphere. When carbon dioxide, CO2, is dissolved in water, it forms carbonic acid, H2CO3, which loses a proton, H+, immediately. Carbonic acid is even more acidic than white vinegar. Put a few drops of vinegar on sea shells to see what happens.

It is well established among researchers that the uptake of increased amounts of carbon dioxide will make ocean water more acidic as the gas dissolves to create carbonic acid. Ocean chemistry is changing 100 times more rapidly than in the 650,000 years that preceded the modern industrial era and since the late 1980s, researchers at Scripps Oceanography and others have recorded an overall drop in the pH of the oceans from 8.16 to 8.05.

The California coast is less vulnerable, relative to some tropical locales, to ocean acidification because of the strong upwelling of deep ocean water offshore. The deep water is colder and more nutrient-rich than the surface water. In effect, the deep ocean circulation is like a tape recorder, and we are replaying the CO2 levels from 50 years ago, when those parcels of water were last at the surface.

Yet, the upwelling water is already so acidic that the marine life off the coast of California is stressed. They have difficulty forming shells and skeletons, causing them to be more susceptible to disease. Phytoplankton blooms are occurring with greater frequency and lasting for longer periods due to the enhanced CO2. The commercial Dungeness crab season has shrunk to two weeks. The list of effects goes on and on.

If this is happening with 50 year old atmospheric CO2 levels (310 parts per million), what happens when today's surface ocean water (380 ppm CO2) resurfaces?

Further reading:

• Rising Acidity Is Threatening Food Web of Oceans
• U.S. Pacific Coast Waters Turning More Acidic
• Global scientists draw attention to threat of ocean acidification
• Fishermen Make Mad Dash For Dungeness Crab

Tidepooling Opportunity This Weekend

Grandma Ann of Sitting Knitting posted a reminder that this weekend offers tidepooling opportunities. See her listing of low tide times.

See you Sunday afternoon at Abalone Cove! Email me if you want to carpool.

From the archives:

• LA Tidepooling
• Tidepooling Wrapup

Tidepooling Wrapup

The tide pools at Abalone Cove Shoreline Park was not as crowded as we feared. We were able to easily find a parking spot. Perhaps the smoke kept people away. Fortunately, the air quality at the park beat the air quality at our house.
The smoke made for a fantastic sunset.
The tide pools did not disappoint.
Anemones galore and some sea worms to the right.
Sea urchins and hermit crabs.

One of two sea hares that we found.
Octopus 3 (of 4 we saw) came out briefly. Iris helped this uni, or purple sea urchin, back to deeper water.
We saw too many brittlestars to count.
We marvelled at the rocks.
Which formed terraces.
Mark skipping rocks at sunset.
We capped the evening off with dinner and a birthday dessert at Cafe Misto.

Aside:
Yesterday, we picked up friends around the block for carpooling. We then stopped at the food court in Mitsuwa Marketplace for lunch (soba zaru and unagi don, yum!) and Books Sanseido to pick up the latest edition of Mrs. Stylebook (pictures to follow), hit the tidepools, then went out for Mark's birthday dinner.

Today, we ran our errands and then went to a birthday party (same family who went to the tidepools with us), finishing up with a trip to Borders and the new Lebanese restaurant near our home.

The weekend is over and I didn't respond to Katy's meme or go to the gym. Perhaps next weekend.

LA Tidepooling

Photo courtesy of Steve Wolfe's slideshow of Abalone Cove.

Saturday, November 15 2:00 pm: Abalone Cove Shoreline Park tide pools - Rancho Palos Verdes. Docents from the Point Vicente Interpretive Center (PVIC) will lead groups on a two hour walk along the California Coastal Trail and a visit into the tide pools at the extreme of the low tide discussing geology, plant and animal life, as well as marine mammals, and the Native Americans who lived here. This is a "no take Reserve" so the tide pools are teeming with fascinating marine life. Wear sturdy shoes as a portion of the walk is along the cobblestone beach. The beach access trail is "moderate". No reservations required. FREE - donations appreciated.


Directions: The walk starts in the Abalone Cove parking lot. From the San Diego Fwy., I-405, exit at Hawthorne Blvd.  Drive south approx. 15 miles. Turn left onto Palos Verdes Drive West and continue to the park entrance on your right. 5907 Palos Verdes Drive South. If you get to the Wayfarer's Chapel, you just missed it. The parking fee will be waived from Noon until 12:30 if you tell the attendant that you are going on the walk. Co-sponsored with Los Serenos de Point Vicente and the City of Rancho Palos Verdes (1-310-377-5370). For more info, contact: Sunshine at 1-310-377-8761 or SunshineRPV@aol.com, Subject: Day Hikes.

This gave me an ethical quandary. If I blog about this, the expected crowd might be even worse than usual. However, this is such a rare occurrence and a real treat for kids, it would be remiss not to share this info with other families.

If you look at the NOAA tide tables for Los Angeles, you will see that tides lower than -1.0 (feet below mean low tide) rarely occur during daylight hours. Yet, those are the only conditions that expose the tidepools at Abalone Cove shoreline park. Take a look at the gorgeous photos in Steve's slide show. Abalone Cove has some of the finest tidepooling in California. This is our lucky week.

11/12/2008 Wed     02:35PM LST -1.0 L
11/13/2008 Thu     03:21PM LST -1.3 L
11/14/2008 Fri     04:11PM LST -1.3 L
11/15/2008 Sat     05:06PM LST -1.2 L
11/16/2008 Sun     06:05PM LST -0.9 L 

If you can make it during a weekday, you will encounter less of a crowd (unless there are school groups). This Saturday afternoon should be a madhouse, but that's the only time my family can go. Consider carpooling because parking will be tight.

More info:

• 2008 LA Tide Tables
• 2009 LA Tide Tables
• 2010 LA Tide Tables
  
• CA coastal hikes
• Steve Wolfe's photography (great CA photos)
• Abalone Cove Shoreline Park
• Point Vicente Interpretive Center (great place for whale watching from shore)
• Tie-dye Family at PVIC