Treasures of the Tide

In the tidal pools and coastal forests of Canada's Vancouver Island, Jen Murphy discovers a marine environment that's both minuscule and magical.

- Jen Murphy

I USUALLY DISAPPROVE OF footwear at the beach. But even I agreed to wear wellies as I walked through the tide pools at Sombrio Beach, where a thick bed of midnight-blue mussels and pointy goose barnacles was slicked with glossy green surfgrass.

It was a sunny day in early May on a wild stretch of sand in the Juan de Fuca Provincial Park, on the southwestern coast of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia. The sky was so clear I could see the outline of Washington's Mount Olympus some 60 miles away. The water was full of surfers in wet suits; colossal Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, and cedar trees lined the shore.

Everything about this epic landscape tugged my attention upward, but my guide, Annalee Kanwisher of Coastal Bliss Adventures, encouraged me to focus my gaze down. "Wait for it," she said excitedly. The tide was going out and a creamy layer of ocean-whipped foam was sucked back out to sea, leaving behind a glassy tide pool teeming with life. Ruby-red sea stars were plastered on the rocks, and hermit crabs scampered across driftwood.

The purple tentacles of a sea anemone blossomed like petals of a dahlia, and a sluglike nudibranch with electric orange spots clung to a ribbon of kelp.

Vancouver Island is a place where old-growth forests are named for holy spaces (like Cathedral Grove, in a park on the island's eastern edge) and trees can have celebrity status ("Big Lonely Doug," Canada's second-tallest Douglas fir, is a main attraction). People travel there to be awed by the immensity of nature. But I wanted to see the smaller wonders hidden in the island's intertidal zones.