Visitors Can Come In for the Tides

The tides go in and out, washing over crusty rocks, stirring the fronds of small marine plants, nourishing scores of sea creatures from kelp bass to keyhole limpets.

But this is no ordinary tide pool, governed by the rhythmic pull of moon and sun. No, at the new tide pool exhibit in the reception center of Doheny State Park at Dana Point, the water rises and falls at the flick of a switch.

Taken from the nearby ocean, many forms of sea life can be seen up close, even touched and picked up by hands large and small.

“No other state park has anything like this,” said Supervising Ranger Jerry Spansail. “To see something as good or better you’d have to go to Scripps (Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla) or to Sea World.”

Donations

The tide pool was created in a 750-gallon tank by rangers and volunteers of the Doheny State Park Interpretation Assn., using money from donations and from a fund set up by the state Legislature to encourage improvements at state parks.

Plans call for almost doubling the size of the reception center building--with construction to start in about two weeks--to hold a 1,700-gallon aquarium stocked with fish and other creatures, plus further amenities to help visitors understand the wildlife and the plants they see around them in the park and in the real ocean tide pools. Total cost of all improvements, including the new tide pool which replaces a small, 80-gallon pool, will be approximately $35,000.

Ranger Ted Ehrheart, whom Spansail called a “prime mover” in development of the interpretation center, said the tide pool inhabitants include 10 species of fish such as opaleye, sand and kelp bass, croakers, sheepshead and the like, as well as half a hundred varieties of other marine animals--starfish, spiny lobsters, sea anemones, abalone, sea cucumbers, scallops and others.

Octopuses Lay Eggs

A small aquarium nearby holds three small octopuses. They recently laid eggs which is an indication that the animals are in good shape, Spansail said.

“People are free to touch and even pick up some of the creatures, and there’s always someone here to help them identify what they’re looking at,” Ehrheart said. “But we remind them that, even though it’s OK to handle them in here, they should not try to touch the ones they may see out in the real tide pools.”

And, he said, while the rise and fall of the tides now is manually controlled by a switch, “there is a gadget that could do it automatically on a regular schedule, but the volunteer interpretation association is a little short for the $100 it would cost to install it.”