June 14, 12 – 3pm: Please join us at Pt Whitehorn Marine Reserve County Park for What’s the Point: a low-tide event where naturalists help you identify and learn about intertidal creatures like fanciful nudibranchs. Geology and plant/bird tours are scheduled (see below), and community organizations focused on ocean health and water quality will have displays and people to talk to about their work. If you haven’t been there, this beach is spectacularly beautiful, and at this low tide (-1.9’ at 1:56pm), the sandy tidepools will be exposed so we can observe shore crabs, eelgrass, tubeworms, baby flatfish and eel-like blennies. Further out, big boulders dropped by melting glaciers host the larger sea stars, anemones and crabs. Even further out, seals lie on top of a flat rock, relaxing and grunting the low tide away.
Naturalists will be on the beach the whole time. Special tours are as follows:
12 – 1:30 Learning about plants and birds (mostly by ear) as we walk the ¾ mile trail leading to the beach. Naturalist Pam Borso is a past president of North Cascades Audubon Society and a certified Washington Native Plant Society Plant Steward. She leads numerous plant and bird walks.
12:30 – 1 Greg Green leads a field tour on the beach exploring the rocks left by the melting glacier that transported them all the way from Canada. He will also talk about how the surf and currents work with the bluffs to shape and maintain the beach. Greg is a wildlife ecologist who teaches at WWU, among other activities.
1:30 – 2 Dr. Doug Clark, Professor of Geology at Western Washington University, will guide a beach exploration to explain how glaciers, sea-level rise and fall, coastal processes, giant ice-age floods, and even ancient earthquakes have shaped our region over the last ~20,000 years.
2 – 2:30 Keeley Chiasson, a consulting coastal scientist, will tell the story of the beach starting with the backshore and moving down gradient to the low beach. Learn how beach characteristics and large woody debris influence forage fish, bull kelp, eelgrass, and ultimately salmon.
We look forward to seeing you at the beach!
