Harbor seals have priority at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in San Mateo County, about 20 miles south of San Francisco. The place is famous for its tide pools, but it's not uncommon for vast areas of its inter-tidal rocks to be coned off in order to give the seals some peace. There are around twenty of them lounging contentedly in the photo below.
Until my most recent visit, though, I'd never been particularly impressed with the quality of the tide pools at the Reserve. They always seemed to present rather meagre finds and be stripped of the seaweeds that usually indicate a thriving tidal community. But this time the seals were in such abundance that a revised human-exclusion zone forced me to go south, instead of my usual route north up the beach.
It seems like I've always been going in the wrong direction.
We climbed up the cliff path that takes you from the Fitzgerald car park towards the Moss Beach Distillery, which is in the center of the picture above. Entering the beach pretty much under the Distillery, we found an extensive rock shelf exposed by the low tide. It was carpeted with seaweeds of all kinds and the pools were teaming with mollusks, rock fish, sea stars and crabs. The third graders I was accompanying were in heaven.
The tide was low enough and the waves sufficiently puny for us to walk out to pools that are usually only briefly exposed. They were full of the most beautiful purple anemones.
