For Some, Low Tides = High Times

What goes up must come down. And just as with a ball tossed in the air, that is true of the ocean’s latest series of extreme high and low tides.

So, after the tide peaked at more than seven feet just before 8 a.m. Wednesday, it was only natural for the waters to recede more than two feet lower than the average low tide by mid-afternoon.

That was when the banquet-room doors were thrown open for hundreds of gulls in some of Orange County’s coastal tide pools, such as the one at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point.

“A good low tide exposes a large bed of rocks and shellfish, including mussels, that we have here, and the gulls, who are scavengers anyway, just flock in,” state lifeguard Carl Drake said. “They feast on broken shellfish, bits of seaweed, little crabs. Just anything organic that’s caught in the rocks.”

Incidentally, ornithologists of a purist bent claim there is no such creature as a sea gull, saying there are Western gulls, California gulls, ring-billed gulls, herring gulls, Heermann’s gulls and a score of others, but not a single sea gull.

No matter what you call them, they do help keep the coast clear of dead fish and other unpleasant things--and they’re fun to watch.