Environment : Notes about your surroundings.

TIDE POOLS: Harry Helling, education director of the Orange County Marine Institute, has witnessed the impact that humans can have on the tide pool environment.

At the Dana Point Marine Life Refuge, next to the institute, he has seen poachers walk off with trash bags full of protected tide pool creatures, slogans painted by vandals on the rocks, and tide pool animals left to die in the institute parking lot. There is also the impact of human feet scampering over the tide pool rocks.

In order to quantify the effect of the human impact on the intertidal area, the institute undertook a study last year. Volunteers spent several weekends counting visitors to the refuge, taking notes on their activities there and handing out questionnaires. Overall, the study came up with some surprising conclusions:

- Up to 60,000 pounds of live animals are taken, illegally, from the refuge each year.

- About 80% of that total is taken in large quantities for food. The rest, Helling said, is all “nickel and dime.”

- More than 95% of the people returning the questionnaires remembered seeing only three or fewer species of animal in the tide pools. More than 500 species make their home in the rocky environment.

- In one 2-hour period, 560 pounds of garbage was collected and categorized at the 3/4-mile-long refuge.

“It’s clearly a problem of public information,” Helling said. “Most of the infractions out there are from people who really don’t know any better.”

To help correct the situation, the institute has installed one new informational sign at the refuge and is preparing another. The institute, which has developed a model environmental education program for public school students, has also expanded its programs for the general public.

The institute also has hopes for a major expansion that will include more public exhibits and aquaria. While the plans are in their early stages, Helling said he would like to see “a state-of-the-art, museum-type experience for Orange County families.”

Another plan is the continuation of the intertidal study, with emphasis on the status of particular tide pool animals and, later, the feasibility of replanting species that have been depleted.

“Certainly, this represents one of the last pristine (intertidal) areas in Orange County,” Helling said, “and we’re doing what we can to protect it.”