Mike Spinak
June 15th, 2006, 11:06 AM
The intertidal zone can present many challenges for photographing small marine organisms, but the first challenge is simply finding them. There are some locally common species which can always be easily found. However, after a few intertidal excursions, one may be looking for locally somewhat rarer subjects. Before you can hope to find the rarer ones, the organisms have to be there, in the first place. Occasionally they are everywhere, and often they are seemingly all absent... and which way it will be on a given outing can be difficult to predict before heading out.
One pattern that seems fairly consistent and predictable for abundance of rarer species is as follows:
First, there must be a large storm surge from a passing offshore storm. Next, there must be a significant minus tide. When these conditions occur, in immediate succession, the surge pushes the deeper ocean creatures into the intertidal zone, and then the minus tide temporarily traps them in the tidepools. The reason that an offshore storm works best is because an onshore storm will create sediment filled run off into the ocean, which will make the water turbid, which makes good intertidal photography much more difficult.
This may seem like an obscure set of conditions to hope for, but, from my experience, it happens at least several times per year (at least, in my area... the central California coast). If you keep track of the low tides, and pay attention for storm surge warnings, it is easy to figure out when conditions will be best for a tidepool foray.
This sunflower star is an example of an animal that is common in deeper waters, just offshore, but usually avoids the intertidal zone. Thus, sunflower stars are locally a little more unusual in tidepools than what would normally be around. This one got trapped in the tidepools from the kind of conditions described, above.
http://www.mikespinak.com/images/U9735_sunflowerstar.jpg
Mike
www.mikespinak.com
One pattern that seems fairly consistent and predictable for abundance of rarer species is as follows:
First, there must be a large storm surge from a passing offshore storm. Next, there must be a significant minus tide. When these conditions occur, in immediate succession, the surge pushes the deeper ocean creatures into the intertidal zone, and then the minus tide temporarily traps them in the tidepools. The reason that an offshore storm works best is because an onshore storm will create sediment filled run off into the ocean, which will make the water turbid, which makes good intertidal photography much more difficult.
This may seem like an obscure set of conditions to hope for, but, from my experience, it happens at least several times per year (at least, in my area... the central California coast). If you keep track of the low tides, and pay attention for storm surge warnings, it is easy to figure out when conditions will be best for a tidepool foray.
This sunflower star is an example of an animal that is common in deeper waters, just offshore, but usually avoids the intertidal zone. Thus, sunflower stars are locally a little more unusual in tidepools than what would normally be around. This one got trapped in the tidepools from the kind of conditions described, above.
http://www.mikespinak.com/images/U9735_sunflowerstar.jpg
Mike
www.mikespinak.com