Prince of Tide Pools Has Drawn Line in the Sand

If Jim Willoughby gets his way, the tide pools in this quaint seaside town will get the same stringent protection afforded Yosemite National Park.

Supervised access. No collecting. Ongoing education.

Like similar pools up and down the coast, the Point Pinos area draws hundreds of visitors at every low tide. Eager but ignorant, they trample habitats, disturb breeding grounds and handle creatures for which even a minor relocation can mean certain death.

Willoughby is among a growing number of activists who say the state’s intertidal areas are being harmed by visitors’ love affair with the delicate zones, where shifting tides reveal a fragile, hidden world. And he’s gone a step further.

The retired science teacher is leading an effort to wrest control of his local tide pools from state officials and put it into the conservation-minded hands of Pacific Grove’s City Hall.

“I walk here every day and I’ve seen enormous change,” Willoughby said of the Point Pinos tide pools, a mile-long stretch made famous in John Steinbeck’s books “Cannery Row” and “Sweet Thursday.”

Willoughby studied the area while working on his master’s thesis in marine biology in the 1970s. A regular visitor since then, he says an alarming decline in the biodiversity of the area spurred him to activism.

At low tide, sea stars, rock crabs, anemone, tube snails, tiny fish, sea slugs in neon blue and bubble-gum pink feed, travel and breed in the rocky basins. Kelp and grasses, fan-like and elegant, swirl in the surging water. Snowy egrets, blue herons, curlews and sandpipers feed on the easy pickings. It’s a magical world he feels compelled to protect.

“You’ve got hundreds of people using the tide pools, trampling them, taking things as souvenirs, collecting them for food, and it’s killing them,” Willoughby said. “The things that are happening are unbelievable, and we’ve got to stop it.”

So far, at least 1,400 people agree.

Willoughby’s year-old organization, the Coalition to Preserve and Restore Point Pinos Tide Pools, collected that many signatures from local residents urging immediate conservation measures.

Most controversial of the five-point program, which includes placing educational signs and using volunteer docents for guided tide pool walks, is the temporary halt to permits that allow collecting in the tide pools.

Permits are required because the tide pools lie within the Pacific Grove Marine Gardens Refuge, where it is otherwise illegal to collect invertebrates.

Willoughby’s efforts have won the support of some city and state officials and environmentalists, including several Pacific Grove City Council members and the local chapter of the Sierra Club. Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the late ocean science pioneer Jacques Cousteau and head of the Santa Barbara-based Ocean Futures, wrote to the state Assembly in support of Willoughby’s plan.

Even the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is skeptical of Willoughby’s dire conclusions, has signed on.

“Our position has been that we don’t feel there’s any data to support the hypothesis that the tide pools are losing biodiversity, or that any changes are related to human activity,” said Chris Harrold, director of conservation research for the aquarium.

Although aquarium officials first resisted the coalition’s demand to stop collecting, they agreed this month on a temporary moratorium.

“The big problem for us has been public perception,” Harrold said. “We find ourselves in the ironic position as a user of tide pools because we collect there for our exhibits; any statement we make that doesn’t support a no-take zone can be construed as a conflict of interest and calls our credibility into question.”

Just south of San Francisco at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach, similar concerns have cause officials to take action. Rangers have proposed limiting the number of visitors, an idea that drew some criticism. They are also close to finishing a five-year study that compares the biodiversity of a tide pool area that is closed to human visitors to one that remains open to the public.

The findings of that study could help scientists and environmentalists learn whether oceanic influences, such as warm water from El Nino conditions or an increase in sea otters and sea lions, are depleting the tide pools, or whether humans have the most impact.

But for Willoughby, such a study is just the beginning. He favors bolder action.

His plan of attack includes winning city control over the collecting permits, which are handled by the state Department of Fish and Game. He is gathering signatures for a ballot initiative which would allow city voters to ask that Pacific Grove win sole control over doling out the permits.

Should voters agree, Pacific Grove could ask Fish and Game for control over the permits, the only way plants and animals can legally be taken from the tide pools.

Fish and Game officials, who say they are understaffed, said they would gladly cede control of the area.

While he sees support for his idea as progress in his own area, Willoughby said the health of tide pools is more than a local concern.

“It’s a problem along the entire California coastline, especially from the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in San Mateo County to the tide pools of Corona del Mar in Southern California,” he said.

“If we don’t get serious now, we won’t have any tide pools left for our children. They’ll have to go to an aquarium to see what the oceans used to be.”