The Pull of the Moon: Tide Pooling in Seattle

I am infatuated with the moon. I'm not sure what started it, exactly. Most days I keep track of when the moon is up, and its phase, and try to see it, cloud cover permitting. It's been stormy the last few days here, but this morning I spotted the thinnest waning crescent against the blue sky through a gap in the clouds. When you just keep looking, it's amazing how often you can catch a glimpse.

Part of paying attention to the moon is paying attention to the tides. In the winter, the best low tides are in the middle of the night. I have yet to summon enough courage to go out tide pooling in the dark. Now, though, in spring, we are getting low tides in the daylight. 

On a recent Sunday we had a -2.7 tide, and we headed over to West Seattle, to Constellation Park. There is a long, human-built breakwater that extends out into the sound and hosts many creatures. We saw lots of red sea cucumbers, sea stars, moon snails, and even a sunflower star. Sunflower stars have been hit particularly hard by sea star wasting syndrome; we've never seen one in Puget Sound, but only found them years ago on the Oregon coast.

Tide pooling is filled with weird, almost alien life. Here are some strange things that really caught my fancy.  

When I found this, I showed it to my sweet husband. "What do you think this is?"

"The stuff of nightmares!" he replied. Luckily, it is a very small nightmare, as you can see by the size of his thumb off to the side.

stiff-footed sea cucumber

In fact, it is probably a stiff-footed sea cucumber (Eupentacta quinquesemita). They have tube feet like sea stars, which you can see clinging to the rock. Because it is flattened to the rock, you can't see its elongated cucumber shape.

My passion for bryozoans was satisfied by finding my first spiral bryozoan (Bugula californica). I've mostly only found the encrusting kind. The photos are a bit rubbish, because of the waves (and my fear of dropping my phone into the brine). Hopefully you can see the helical, almost Christmas tree-like structure, especially in the second (unfortunately blurry) picture.

spiral bryozoan

spiral bryozoan

And now my favorite thing of the day. The water was full of almost-invisible blobs - baby moon jellies (Aurelia aurita)!

moon jelly


The beautiful orange fringe to the side is a red sea cucumber. There was a little creature swimming around INSIDE one of the moon jellies. You can just see it in the picture below, the smudge on the far side of the jelly.
moon jelly

It looked like a tiny shrimp, and may have been. Moon jellies eat shrimp and similar minute crustaceans, so it's possible that it was prey being digested (horribly) alive. Another rather horrible possibility: moon jellies can have parasitic, shrimp-like amphipods that live inside them and feed on the jelly's ingested prey, or even on the jelly itself from the inside.

Ah, nature. Wonderful, horrible, and always horribly fascinating. 






Location: Constellation Park, 3400 Beach Dr SW, Seattle, WA 98116, USA

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