Year's lowest tide exposes normally hidden sea life to beach explorers

Hundreds of people explored South Sound beaches Tuesday as the lowest tides of the year exposed marine life.

Three days of tides lower than minus 4 feet will continue today and Thursday. As a result, people can view sea creatures and plants that live most of the time underwater.

At Burfoot County Park on Budd Inlet, the noon-hour retreat of saltwater uncovered a brown-and-green carpet of sugar kelp and sea lettuce, punctuated by sticklike tubes poking out of the sand containing species of marine worms.

Sand shrimp skittered around the water's edge, as did dozens of schoolchildren bused in to see some of the sea critters they've been studying in class.

"The coolest thing I saw was a snail," said Hailey Helm, a second-grader at Olympia's Garfield Elementary School.

Farther down the beach, Dean Johnson of Lacey took advantage of the low tide to dig his limit of horse clams — seven — and try for his limit of geoducks — three.

"I've been digging these clams for 50 years," Johnson said. "Horse clams make the best clam chowder."

Found in one of the holes Johnson dug was a plainfin midshipman, a small fish that burrows in the sand during the day, then swims around looking for food at night.

The rows of bioluminescent spots on its sides and underside resemble the buttons of a naval midshipman's uniform, thus the name, said David Jamison, a marine biologist and Boston Harbor resident who shares his knowledge of intertidal and subtidal marine life with school-age children during low-tide events. Jamison writes a weekly feature about marine life for The Olympian's Environment page.

If children and their parents learn more about the beaches and various marine habitats — such as the eroding bluffs that help build the beaches and the diversity of sea life exposed at low tide — they will become better stewards of Puget Sound, Jamison said.

Walking along the beach, Jamison told adults and children that the rubbery-looking casings stuck in the sand were a mixture of sand, mucus and eggs formed by moon snails.

With a flick of his shovel, he uncovered a tiny jackknife clam, encased in a colorful tan-and-rust shell. He said small, light-yellow clumps scattered in the forests of seaweed were the eggs of shellless snails called nudibranchs.

"It's amazing how many children who live in South Sound have never been to the beach," Jamison said. "One of my goals is to help them understand that Puget Sound is here, and that it's a really neat place to go."