Finding the Tide Pool Crown Jewel
Story + Photography by Sara Montour Lewis
I could explore the Puget Sound shoreline at low tide every single day and not get bored with it. It’s hard to wrap your mind around, but at low tide you aren’t really just walking on the beach. What you’re actually doing is walking on the bottom of the Sound. The water is pulled away (if you haven’t watched this explanation of how tides work, I HIGHLY recommend it), revealing glimpses of the life that the Sound sustains and every rock flip (gentle, of course, and always flipped back to where it was originally) is another layer of exploration.
I try to go out to the beach with very little expectation of what I’m going to find because the surprise of it all is undeniably the most magical part of it, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t always have my spidey senses finely tuned towards finding an octopus.
On this beautiful Seattle day I got lucky and was able to spend some time with this adorable Pacific Red Octopus. Another beach-goer found it way up on the shore, completely white and pretty dry, but we carefully transported it back to the water on a bed of kelp (safely for us and the animal, octopuses have a sharp beak and can bite) and watched as it slowly turned red again and went on with its day.
