Winter Tides

The Pacific rocky intertidal zone is one of the most punishing and extreme environments on earth but it contains amazing diversity and beauty, and this week offers one of the best opportunities of the year to explore this strange world. Above, a starburst anemone, Anthopleura sola, lives up to its name, displaying a dazzling array of tentacles that resemble the petals of a flower. All photos © 2014 S. Guldimann

... All things are one thing and that one thing is all things—plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and the expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tidepool again.

—John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Winter brings spectacular daytime low tides to the Malibu coast, offering earthbound mortals a glimpse of the bizarre and wonderful microcosm that exist between the ocean and the shore.

This year, some of the lowest tides of the year will arrive just in time for Christmas. This "king tide" occurs during the new moon and peaks from December 21-23, but there will be low tides in the afternoon all week, starting on Wednesday, December 17, with a .65-foot low tide at 12:45 p.m. The lowest tide—minus 1.24—will arrive on December 23 at 4:30 p.m.

It can be hard to make time for anything extra—even mundane necessities like laundry—during the holidays, but an hour at the beach is a wonderful thing for restoring equilibrium.

Park visitors explore the rocky landscape revealed during a minus tide in November. December's new moon low tides should be even more revealing. This was a minus .44 tide. On December 23, the tide will be minus 1.24.

Visitors, and even locals, often fall into the comfortable pattern of picking a beach and sticking with it. The winter low tides are an invitation to step out of that habit and explore.

Leo Carrillo, El Matador, Point Dume and Surfrider all offer good opportunities for tidepooling. These are all State Park beaches,  and while there are parking fees for the official lots there's always plenty of free parking near by on PCH or, in the case of Point Dume, along Westward Beach Road, where a half-mile walk along Westward Beach and up and over the Point Dume Headlands to reach the access stairs down to Pirate's Cove provides an opportunity to watch for dolphins and the first winter whales.

The most accessible tidepools in the Malibu area are at Leo Carrillo, where the intertidal zone starts just a few hundred feet from PCH. They are also some of the best. Despite its proximity to the road, this area is still home to an amazing array of marine life.

The starburst anemone at the top of the page is open, active, and waiting for prey to come its way. This one is exposed during the low tide. It's pulled its tentacles in while it waits for the water to rise again and is attempting to avoid becoming prey itself with a camouflage of broken shells and urchin spines that it glues to its outer layer with a tough, waterproof cement.

The California sea hare, Aplysia californica, can move fairly rapidly in the water, where it grazes on algae, but it's entirely helpless out of the water.  Just like the anemone, the sea hare has a strategy to wait out the low tide. Like its distant garden slug relatives, this sea slug conserves moisture behind its thick, slimy skin. It can survive for several hours this way, even in full sun,  until the tide returns. This sea hare is just a couple of inches long. If it survives, it can grow to be 16 inches long and weigh up to five pounds. 

Most encounters with the sea hare are on the shore, where this unfortunate animal, unable to move and armed only with purple ink to discourage predators, resembles a black blob. In the tidepool, they're actually rather spectacular, with a pattern of gold and red spots, and a graceful undulating motion when they swim.

Empty California cone shells often wash up on the beach, or turn up in tidepools as the home of hermit crabs, but it's rare to get a glimpse of the live mollusk. This small sea snail is a veracious predator that feeds on a wide range of species, including purple olive shells and, believe it or not, fish, which the snail paralyses with a fast-acting venom. There are a number of tropical species of cone shell that are deadly to humans. This little snail is only a threat to other snails, worms, and tiny fish. However, cone venom shows promise as a pain medication for humans.

The tidepool sculpin, Oligocottus maculosus, is one of the species the cone shell preys on. In fact, it's one of the species all kinds of things prey on, which is why it, too, has a weapon: sharp spines on its fins. Some sculpin are also equipped with venom but I've never heard of anyone getting stung by a tidepool sculpin. It may look fierce and somewhat dragon-like, but it seems to depend on being fast moving and hard to see for survival. This remarkable small fish can breath air if it finds itself trapped out of water or in a pool with low oxygen levels during low tide. It's the most commonly observed fish in our local intertidal zone. 

Here's someone who isn't impressed by cone shells, except as a source for housing material. This is the blue-band hermit crab, Pagurus samuelis. This one has taken up residence in a somewhat battered Acanthina shell. Blue-bands are one of the most common Southern California intertidal hermit crabs, and always fun to watch—they're fast moving and usually very active.

If you are fortunate, you might see one of these. This is a live California  cowrie, also known as a chestnut cowrie or Neobernaya spadicea. Although it's hard to see here, this mollusk has, arguably, one of the most beautiful shells found in Southern California waters, and it has been collected to the brink of disappearing along the local coast, although their numbers appear to be increasing recently. I've seen more chestnut cowries at Point Dume this year than I have in the past 10 years. I don't know what that means, but hopefully it's good news.

Humans aren't the only ones taking advantage of the winter minus tides. This great egret has just snagged a fish—probably a sculpin—in a bed of surf grass and is in the process of turning it right-way-round to swallow it.

The shorebirds also take advantage of the low tide. Godwits have specialized bills that have evolved to enable them to probe the sand for sandcrabs and other tasty morsels. This bird is sometimes mistaken for the curlew, another shore species with a long bill. An old birdwatcher told me long ago that the way to tell the difference is to remember that the curlew's beak curves down, while the godwit's beak curves slightly upward—towards God. 

I am extraordinarily blessed to have had the opportunity to grow up by the ocean and to still spend many hours there. I've seen many tides—high and low—but I still see things that amaze and astonish me. The curious object in the photo above is called a mermaid's purse. It's actually the egg case of a dogfish shark or a stingray. I've read about them all my life, but this is the first one I've ever seen. I found it among the tide wrack at Surfrider Beach last week. The Christmas season brings many gifts, literal and figurative, but sometimes one of the best gifts is finding the time to step away from everything. There's no reason why a day at the beach, or even just an hour, shouldn't be part of holiday tradition. The king tide offers a perfect incentive. However, there's another chance to catch a spectacularly low afternoon minus tide during the first king tide of the new year, the week of January 20, 2015.

It's important to remember that the reverse side of this week's minus tides are formidable 8-foot-plus high king tides. Beachgoers should double-check the local tide tables and plan to leave when the tide begins to come in. This is especially critical at beaches like Leo Carrillo, El Matador, and Point Dume, where the low tides provide access to sea caves or otherwise inaccessible rock formations that are rapidly reclaimed by the returning tide and can trap unwary visitors. That sounds preposterously melodramatic, but serious injuries—and the need for rescue—result more often than one would think. 

It's a good idea to keep an eye on the surf report as well as the tide chart. Waves like this one at Point Dume on Sunday are great for surfers but less than ideal for tidepool explorers.

Winter storms bring joy to the surf community but they can complicate the tidepooling experience, generating big surf and "sneaker" waves even when the tide is at its lowest. The warnings about staying off piers and breakwaters during high surf events also applies to reefs and rocks, and it's good to remember that old advice about never turning your back on the waves. 

The website for NOAA tide predictions offers an easy to access, accurate online source for tides. Surfline is a good basic surf report site. This is their page for Point Dume. There are also dozens of tide and surf report apps.

See you at the beach!

Suzanne Guldimann
15 December 2014

Looking for the perfect Christmas gift? A selection of cards and photographic prints from the Malibu Post is now available at Fine Art America.  

The Call of the Running Tide

A child dances in the surf at sunset on Zuma Beach. All photos © 2014 S. Guldimann

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking,

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

—John Masefield

There’s a sort of restless small breeze in the afternoons now that carries the sound and smell of the sea and whispers autumn is coming, but in most years, the end of August brings not the end of summer but the best beach weather of year. 

It’s the last weekend before the start of school for many, and the beaches are packed today. Impatient travelers crowd the canyon roads or crawl along PCH at 10 mph, seeking a last summer afternoon of sea and sun. 

On Monday, everything will be different. Solitude will descend on beaches that have teemed with summer beachgoers, and once Labor Day is past, even the weekend crush diminishes and the sandpipers and gulls have the beach to themselves again.

A snowy egret forages on a quiet weekday evening at Pirate's Cove.

From September until the middle of October, the sun is out more often than not and the water is warm. By the end of October, the water temperature drops rapidly but the season of sunsets arrives, bringing with it all the birds of passage—species headed to the Southern Hemisphere and winter residents, returning from the north.

For me, this is the best time of the year to explore some of Malibu’s fabled 27 miles of shoreline. It’s amazing how much diversity exists along the Malibu coast—wide sandy beaches facing the open ocean; sheltered, cliff-lined coves where tidepools are full of life; dramatic sea stacks and caves that feel entirely away from civilization; and more urban beaches just a few steps from PCH.

Autumn brings dramatic sunsets and some of the best best weather of the year.

In 2013, beach access activist Jenny Price garnered media attention for her Our Malibu Beaches app, which features every public access way in Malibu. The app is available here, but visitors—and adventurous locals—don’t need an app to explore the coast; maps of the access ways are available at the Coastal Commission website, and many easements have signs that can be easily spotted from PCH. However, it is helpful to know what to expect when one gets there. Every beach offers something different.

A coastal access sign points the way to a staircase leading to Escondido Beach.

I interviewed Price for the May 21, 2013 issue of the old Malibu Surfside News. She told me that her main goal with the app was to highlight Malibu’s “less accessible” beach easements and to bring attention to what she described as fake driveways, illegal no parking signs, illegal and inaccurate trespassing and private property signs. 

Price said that beachgoers have received citations, threats from security guards and other harassment while using dedicated easements and legal parking.

“People are so tired of that,” she said. “We need to have signs that say ‘this is where you can walk. I see this as a first step.”

It is an important step, but not the first one. The first step was passing the California Coastal Conservation Initiative, Proposition 20, in 1972. Four years later, the state legislature enacted the California Coastal Act, providing the first real protection for 1.5 million acres of coastal land, and 1,100 miles of shoreline, and ensuring the public’s right to access the beach.

The Coastal Conservation Initiative was a grassroots effort. My parents were among the thousands of volunteers who helped gather signatures to place the initiative on the ballot. The image above is the front of one of the original petition forms. It's a reminder that community members can prevail against seemingly insurmountable corporate-driven opposition, if enough people are passionate about passing legislation. The Coastal Act may be far from perfect, but it's the main reason there's still so much open space in Malibu. 

It’s a complicated document, and while everyone who lives in the Coastal Zone, or is interested in protecting our coastal resources, should read it—the entire document is available here, the heart of the act is legislation that protects public beach access and environmentally sensitive coastal habitat. Under the Coastal Act, the public has access to almost the entire California Coast below the mean high tide line. And, in many places where private homes line the beach,  “lateral easements” have been negotiated that allow beachgoers access to dry sand.

The beach side of the "Great Wall of Malibu" is a bewildering mix of lateral (dry sand) easements and fiercely guarded private beach, but the right for the public to use the beach below the mean high tide is part of California State law and applies to every inch of California's 1,100 miles of coastline. Only the military has the authority to prohibit access.

That may not sound like much to people used to having the beach for their backyard, but it was a major victory for public access. Much of New England, including Maine, with all of its famous seascapes and nautical history, does not have coastal access laws, and even historically important public easements can be placed off limit by private landowners, who control the entire intertidal zone down to the mean low tide line. Public access is limited to “fishing, fowling, and navagation.” 

Thanks to the Coastal Act, almost the entire California coast is accessible to the public. Above,  beachgoers take advantage of an extreme autumn low tide to explore the intertidal zone at Leo Carrillo State Park.

It’s true that parts of Malibu have been a longstanding battleground of access issues. One inventive billionaire on Carbon Beach installed fake garage doors to prevent the public from parking in front of the easement on his property; another put a hedge, a wall, an air conditioning unit, and a tennis court on property they agreed to deed as a vertical easement as a condition for receiving a Coastal Development Permit; and the Coastal Commission heard from two Malibu property owners in June who argued that the vertical easements on their properties had "expired," despite the fact the deeds run with the land in perpetuity. But things are things are improving. The Coastal Commission was recently granted the authority to levy fines on obstructive property owners, which may speed the removal of some obstacles.

Sea level rise is bound to complicate the mean high tide issue along house-lined local beaches. In this case, loss of sand appears to have pushed the mean high tide line all the way under the pylons of this Malibu Road house.

Warner Chabot, an environmental consultant and former CEO of the California League of Conservation Voters, said in a press release that of almost 2000 outstanding Coastal Act violations throughout the state, most involve blocking access, removing access signs or posting illegal and unauthorized “no parking” or “no beach access” signs.

Beaches with high density housing are inevitably the site of access issues. This photo shows cheek-to-jowl Malibu Road in the foreground and Corral Beach, with wide stretches of open space, in the background.

In eastern Malibu, Carbon Beach, Malibu Road (the Beach is officially named Amarillo Beach, but no one ever calls it that) and Escondido Beach remain a confusing patchwork of public and private sand—the City of Malibu map shown above details which is which, and Jenny Price’s app is also useful for sorting out where you can sit and were you can’t. Western Malibu, which has many of Los Angeles County’s most beautiful beaches, is much more welcoming, and offers miles of easy to access coastline with ample parking.

One of the Malibu Road vertical easements that are opened at sunrise and locked at sunset.

I admire the determination of activists like Price, but have to confess that many of the hotly contested easements at locations are not my idea of inviting places to spend the day at the beach—access ways are crammed between tightly packed houses, and the only beach at high tide is under the pylons supporting the houses.  Most of these easements are a matter of principle rather than comfort or convenience, and none have restrooms or lifeguards.

I'm not sure why anyone would want to spend the day under a bunch of creosote-soaked pylons, but the beach easements at Malibu Road and the Malibu Colony offer interesting starting points for low tide walks, while Carbon Beach showcases some unusual architecture.

I would much rather watch the sunset at Westward Beach, or prowl the tidepools and rock formations at El Matador Beach and Leo Carrillo State Park—three of the most beautiful beaches anywhere. 

El Matador Beach, with its impressive rock formations, sea caves, and plenty of space is an inviting place to spend the day.

There are a dozen roadside beach options, too: Corral Beach requires a scramble down a small slope, but it's a good beach for swimming and has a lifeguard tower. 

Westward, Zuma, El Matador, El Pescador, La Piedra, Nicholas, and Leo Carrillo beaches  all have pay lots with restroom facilities, but they also offer free parking on PCH. Just don't leave valuables in your car—these are popular locations for smash and grab burglars. These western beaches feature plenty of sand, rugged rock outcroppings and many continuous stretches of uninterrupted public beach that are ideal for long walks. And one can park along PCH almost anywhere north of County Line and south of Point Mugu and find secluded coves and views of open ocean and empty sky.

Leo Carrillo's North Beach, above, and southern section, called Seccos by the surfers, below, have doubled for everything from tropical islands to the coast of England in numerous movies and TV shows. It's easy to see why. 

My favorite beach walk includes the Point Dume Nature Preserve. There's a handful of parking spaces on Cliffside Drive, but the best place to park is at Westward Beach. It's a short walk from the roadside parking to the trailhead at the base of the Dume headlands. The trail leads up the bluff and around the headlands. Sea lions like to sun themselves on the rocks below. In winter, whales pass so close you sometimes hear them breathing before you see them. 

The access stairs to Pirate's Cove would be right at home on a ghost ship—it's rusty and precarious, but well worth the effort to climb down.

On the east side of the point, where the ancient Chumash kept a shine site, a rusty, rickety iron stairs leads from the top of the bluffs down to Pirates’ Cove. There are tidepools to explore here. But it's just as pleasant to sit on the sand and watch the waves roll in. The Point faces due south. It's open sea all the way to Antarctica.  

A surfer heads into the water at Little Dume Cove, east of Point Dume State Beach. High tides can isolate all of the Dume coves. Walkers need to check a reliable tide table before setting off on a long walk on this stretch of coast, or risk getting stranded until the tide turns.

When the tide is low, it’s an easy walk from here all the way to Escondido Beach, but don't go too far and watch the time. Each cove along the shore may be transformed into a desert island when the tide is high.

The coast from the west end of Paradise Cove to Zuma Creek at the far west end of Westward Beach is a designated Marine Protected Area and an area of special biological significance that is home to an astonishing array of bird species and marine and intertidal organisms that range from sea cucumbers and tunicates to dolphins and whales.

No two visits to any beach are ever the same, but it’s always a worthwhile journey. We are fortunate to live in a place where that journey is open to all who feel the elemental call of the running tide.

Suzanne Guldimann

16 August 2014

An August monsoon transmutes sky and sand into fire opal during sunset at Westward Beach.