Beachcombing is not really about what you find; it is about learning to see what the tide left behind.

There is a stretch of shoreline just north of the harbor breakwater where the rock shelves out into the sea in long, flat steps. At high tide it disappears entirely, and tourists walk past it without a second glance. But an hour before low tide, it begins to emerge like a drowned staircase, and for a brief window the richest habitat on our coast is open for visiting.

Tidepooling is the cheapest pastime in Harrow Bay and, I would argue, the most rewarding. You need no boat, no permit, and no particular skill. You need a tide table, a pair of shoes with grip, and the willingness to crouch until your knees complain. That is the entire equipment list.

What You'll Find in the Pools

The pools closest to the sand tend to be shallow and warm, and they belong to the hardy creatures: periwinkles clustered like tiny cobbles, hermit crabs dragging borrowed shells, and the occasional shore crab that freezes when it sees your shadow and then bolts sideways with startling speed. Move farther out along the shelf and the pools deepen. Here you find anemones, closed up like dark gelatinous buttons until the water covers them again, and if you are patient and very still, they open into pale flower shapes that are worth the wait.

Sea stars are less common than they were when I was a kid, which longtime residents will tell you is true of a lot of things along this coast. When you do find one, leave it where it is. They do not enjoy being pried off rocks, and they do not survive the experience as often as people assume.

The real trick to tidepooling is patience of a particular kind. The pools look empty at first glance. They almost never are. Sit down beside one and wait two or three minutes without moving, and the residents who were hiding from your footsteps will begin to reappear: small fish darting between weed, a sculpin settling back onto the bottom, a nudibranch in colors that seem borrowed from a paint store rather than a coastline. The whole ecosystem runs on a schedule of hiding and reappearing, and you only see it if you stop being a disturbance.

Rules of the Rocky Shore

First, check the tide table before you go, and not just the low tide time. Watch the weather and the swell forecast too. A calm day and a low tide are both required; a low tide during a heavy swell is not a safe time to be out on the rocks, and the water can return faster than you expect. Second, walk on bare rock where you can and step on seaweed as little as possible, since it is both slippery and alive. Third, turn every rock back the way you found it. A rock flipped and left upside down is a small eviction notice for everything that was living under it.

Take pictures instead of souvenirs. The pools are a neighborhood, not a gift shop, and the neighborhood is better off when everyone who visits leaves it exactly as they found it. Bring a kid if you can borrow one. They see more than we do, and they ask better questions.

Low tide tomorrow is just after seven in the morning. I will be out on the shelf with my coffee, crouching until my knees complain. Come join me.