Sea Urchins Were All Children at Whale Festival

By MICHAEL ASHCRAFT

Feb. 25, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

DANA POINT —

Children clambered over slimy rocks Saturday, picking their way through swirling tide pools rich with antediluvian sea life.

It was low tide at the Dana Point tide pools. The seawater had rolled back and left the stubbly shore naked. Seaweed-covered rocks provided the only fortification for hundreds of crustaceans, mollusks and other creatures in the pristine puddles and gullies of trapped water.

The children squealed with delight at the sea’s exposed wonders. They toured the tide pools as part of the Dana Point Festival of Whales, a celebration of the migration of California gray whales. Activities started Saturday and will continue with whale-watching trips, art shows, fireboat demonstrations and whale-calling contests through March 11.

The 22 youngsters and 16 adults in the tide-pool group began their exploration at the Dana Point Youth and Group Facility with a short lesson in marine life from tour guide Pam Johnson.

“Imagine your house filling up with water twice a day--that would be pretty rough wouldn’t it?” Johnson asked the crowd encircling her. “Well, that’s what life is like in the tide pool.”

Then the group hiked in a semicircle across Dana Cove Park to the rock-strewn foot of Dana Point’s bluffs near the Orange County Marine Institute, where the tide pools hide their treasures.

As waves ground against the rocks, the new marine biologists overturned stones, picked up starfish, poked sea anemones and discovered the sea life scattered like confetti around the rocks.

“Oh my gosh, look at that!” said Jamie Rutland, 6, of Dana Point. “It’s moving!”

The object of her attention was a black shell, as small as a shirt button, that scuttled on claws over a pebbled pool bottom.

“Do you remember the name of that?” Johnson asked her.

“A hermit crab,” a friend helped.

Johnson had shown the children pictures of many of the sea creatures beforehand. Besides telling about the peculiarities of shallow-water plants and animals, Johnson taught respect for the fragile tide pool environs: It’s OK to touch but not take home the stones and creatures.

In fact, she said later, it’s against state law to take anything from tide pools.

Stacie Paulus, 10, had her hands in a small pool when she touched what looked like a rotten fig.

“This thing slimed me,” she complained, wiping a purple ink-like ooze off the palm of her hand on seaweed. “Sick. Gross.”

The rotten fig slithered. What Stacie had discovered was a sea hare, known among landlubbers as a sea slug.

Children were not the only ones having fun. Fred Roess, 40, who brought 10 children from the San Juan Capistrano Presbyterian Church, picked up a sea slug the size of a football. Holding the glistening black lump away from his body, he gingerly displayed it to several awed kids.

“Hey, you could have that thing stuffed and put over the mantelpiece,” joked Tom Deckert, 41, of Newport Beach, who brought his two daughters.

At the Marine Institute, two sea lions slept on a fenced-in area of a wooden porch as curious children and adults watched them. The animals, stranded on a beach with infections two months ago, were brought by the Friends of the Sea Lion Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach. They will return to the wild soon, said Karin De Anda , an instructor with the center.

Nearby, children crawled into a inflated plastic “aquarium” and colored pictures of sea life. The 25-by-20-foot structure, inflated by two industrial fans, looked like a giant translucent pillow.

EVENTS SUNDAY FOR FESTIVAL OF THE WHALES

DANA POINT YOUTH AND GROUP FACILITY:

* 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Art show and demonstration by Niguel Art Assn.

* 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Underwater slide show and equipment presentation.

* 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Ocean kayaking demonstration.

* 12:30-3 p.m. Orange County Harbor Patrol fireboat demonstration.

* 12:30-3 p.m. Whale Rescue Unit photo exhibit, slides, information.

* 12:20-3 p.m. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fish and mammal display.

ORANGE COUNTY MARINE INSTITUTE

* 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m. “In the Belly of the Whale” exhibit and puppet show.

* 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Public tours aboard the Pilgrim, $3.

* 2 p.m. Whale-calling contest.