How One Puddle Can Hold an Entire Ocean World

0:00 What if I told you an entire ocean ecosystem can fit inside a puddle? Because every time the tide goes out, that's exactly what happens. This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, your weekday ocean news update. If you care about staying informed on the oceans every weekday, hit that follow button right now on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss tomorrow's interview with Kirstie Burnett, a coworker of mine at Pisces Oceans. We're talking about how she grew up in Nova Scotia on the Scotian Shores, enjoying cold waters, the species, the habitats above and below. It's gonna be amazing. Check that out tomorrow. So hit that follow button if you haven't already. Now, today, we're answering a simple question.

0:40 Why are tide pools one of the best ways to experience the ocean? And the answer is pretty simple, because they are like tiny windows into the entire marine ecosystem. When the tide goes out, seawater gets trapped between rocks along the shoreline. When you first look at them, these pools don't look very exciting. But they're one of my favorite things to look at. It's a little water, maybe some seaweed in there. You know, A few shells, may have somebody, may not. Maybe they'll have a rock crab. But then you stop, and you look closer because you're gonna start to see a lot of things moving around, little invertebrates, maybe some small fish. Tiny fish start darting around the rocks. Snails crawl across the seaweed blades. Crabs hide under the algae. Small worms disappear into cracks pretty quickly, but a whole community appears, and every tide pool is different.

1:26 You may even get a starfish every once in a while, and that's what makes them so much fun to explore. When you look at tide pools, you can go from rock to rock and jump all over the place, and you have all these pools. And sometimes they scale up, and sometimes they scale down, and you get to just put your rubber boots on and you go from place to place to place. You can lift a rock. All of a sudden, there's a crab there waiting to defend itself. It's a pretty cool place. It really is. In my interview tomorrow with Kirsti Burnett, the marine biologist, she talked about growing up exploring coastal habitats and learning to appreciate the wildlife hidden in places a lot of people overlook. Like, tide pools are perfect examples of that. The longer you look, the more you find. It's, a lot of times, like, if you're a diver, wherever you are, whether you're in the tropics or whether you're in temperate ecosystems, when you're a diver, you go, and you'll see, like, the big things.

2:13 If you see a dolphin or you see a manatee or you see a shark, you'll see some big fish, maybe a barracuda or something like that. It's pretty cool to see. Then you start to see all these, like, community fish, right? All these schooling fish of tangs and you know, you see the odd pufferfish. And then you'll see, like, a parrotfish that's maybe munching on some algae, on some coral. And then you see all these wonderful things. And then you start to really look down even further, and you start to pay more attention. And you start to see the different shrimp that are around and the different nematodes that are brightly colored, but they're kinda camouflaged right in front of your face. And then you start seeing little crabs that scurry around. Different-looking crabs too. Some look like shrimp. Some look like what you would typically think as a crab. Right? And they're just all different, different colors.

2:55 Maybe some, like, decorator crabs maybe have some things on it to kinda camouflage themselves. And then you might see some flatfish that are hiding underneath the sand. Or you might even see, like, a stingray or a skate, depending on where you are. There's just so many things that you can see if you just actually just look. And a tide pool's the same way. If you just spend some time looking around, you might find some things darting around. But sometimes it's just more of things that take a while to get comfortable when you have this large human being. I was talking about myself. Everything's large for a human being, like, as a human being for these crabs. Not to say anybody's large here. I'm a large guy. You- You see them and they see, they see a large guy. That's what I mean. As they get comfortable knowing that nothing's gonna hurt them, they start to come out more, and you can start to see how they interact with each other and how they move.

3:39 It's really cool. The longer you look, the more you find. I think that's really cool. But these aren't just interesting places. They're scientifically important, too. A 2023 study led by Carlos Vignieri found that the tide pools increase the complexity of coastal food webs. So that means that little pools aren't just leftovers from the tide. They're functioning ecosystems. They support interactions between species. They provide habitat. They help maintain biodiversity along the shoreline. For something that looks like a puddle, it's pretty impressive. Even if you think about how the tide goes out. I lived in Nova Scotia for a couple years. They have the largest tides in the world, 52 feet, I believe.

4:20 It's 52 feet going back and forth. That's a lot of exposure. Sometimes these tide pools really come in handy in preserving the lives of these species, because those that have to live underwater or use submerged areas that can actually survive in those areas until the tide comes back and they can actually escape, that's a pretty impressive thing to do. And it's, it's just kind of a cool thing that nature has provided us to witness again and again twice a day with the lunar cycle. So, life inside a tide pool, it's also surprisingly challenging. You know, even though it's, it may help save some species, conditions can change dramatically over the course of a day. Water temperatures rise and fall. If it's a small puddle of water and the sun is over it for a long time, It's not gonna take long to heat up.

5:00 But if you're part of this larger system, when the tide comes back in, that will change. Also, the water levels change, right? It could evaporate. Salinity changes. Wave exposure, there's some changes there. Yet these animals that live there can handle it. They're a little hardier. They do it every single day. That makes them some of the toughest little creatures in the ocean. And I think that's important. Because when you start to see how tough these animals are, you really start to see how hardy they have to be to survive. How they have to search out habitats. They have to search out what they need to survive, just like you're searching out information to help protect the ocean, to help with your survival. And that's what you do each and every day when you tune in to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

5:43 So if you are getting value and you continue to get value and you haven't hit that follow button, hit that follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's episode and you continue to get that value. Now, one of the biggest lessons tide pools teach us has nothing to do with science. It has to do with our attention. Kirsti, in tomorrow's interview, talks about how some of the most exciting discoveries, especially in these tide pools, happen when you slow down and you stay still long enough to observe what's around you. If you're making noise and you're erratic and you're moving all over the place, these animals are not gonna show themselves. They're gonna stay hidden because they're worried. They see the shadows, they feel the movements in the water. But tide pools reward that kind of mindset where you're just kinda just chilling out.

6:24 I think that's an important thing. The first minute might seem quiet. The fifth minute is probably gonna be different. By then you're noticing fish, crabs, sea stars, anemones, and things that you don't even know were there. That's the magic of tide pools. You don't need a boat. You don't need scuba gear. You don't need to even to get wet. Maybe you get wet a little bit, but you don't need to get wet. You don't need expensive equipment. You just need curiosity. They're great for kids. If you're a parent and you have some kids, and they're along the coast, take them tide pool hunting. It is a lot of fun. They are gonna have a blast. They're gonna be just able to see these animals. They're gonna be able to wanna pick them up and all that kinda stuff. I tend not to pick them up. I tend to just to look at it.

7:04 But it'll really feed their curiosity to take a look at these fish and take a look at these tide pools and all the critters that are involved in those tide pools and that you see in those tide pools. So you don't even need to travel far to experience the wonder of the ocean. Sometimes the ocean just leaves its best surprises right at your feet, in your boots, in your waders, whatever you wear. It's a lot of fun. You are gonna have a blast. I highly recommend that you go out on the East Coast, on the West Coast, wherever you live or whatever's closest, wherever you vacation, check out the tide pools. The amount of critters that you find in those tide pools are just amazing. Sometimes you can take a picture, but the best thing to do is just sit in your quiet and enjoy the show.

7:44 It's a lot of fun. And speaking of show, I hope you enjoyed this show. If you wanna get ahold of me to talk about your experiences with tide pools or ask questions about tide pools, I would love to hear them. You can hit me up in the socials that are in the show notes. You can DM me on TikTok, on Instagram, wherever you see. If you're on Facebook, reach out to me. I'll probably answer pretty quickly. That's the episode for today. Enjoy tomorrow. So don't forget to follow this episode if you wanna make sure you get tomorrow's episode with Kirsti Burnett. We're gonna talk about the fun part of living by the Atlantic Ocean and cold water oceans. It's gonna be a lot of fun. But thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.