White Point Tide Pools - San Pedro

I hadn't been tide pooling since February - mainly because there haven't been many low tides during daylight hours on the weekend all summer. When I saw there would be a tide below 1 foot (it was 0.97 ft) I took the opportunity to visit my tide pool friends and headed down to San Pedro near White Point State Park. Here's where I was:

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I chose this location partly because this is the only place I'd seen a nudibranch (at my trip in Sept 2009) and partly because I knew there would be plenty of people around. While the nearby Sacred and Abalone Coves are my favorite places to go tide pooling, they are a bit remote and it didn't feel safe to visit them alone.

White Point is also great for families and people who have trouble walking long distances because you can drive right down to the beach (have to pay to park in the lot). I always park right on Paseo del Mar since it's free. This day was crowded as I expected, but there are so many tide pool areas here that I was able to find my own space.

I didn't see anything particularly unusual - just the common gulls, cormorants, pelicans, limpets, chitons, barnacles, purple urchins, anemone, ochre sea stars, striped shore crabs, and hermit crabs - but it was great to take a couple of hours away from technology and my sometimes overplanned life to really focus on the moment. The pools here are really beautiful and full of life. You don't have to look far to see some beautiful creatures. The shore crabs were everywhere grazing on the rocks and the pools are of so many different types (some are deep, some shallow, some stationary, some with more moveable rocks) that you never know what you'll see when you look down.

Here are some of my photos from the trip.