If you're lucky, you'll see a chiton or sea cucumber in a tide pool

Summer is the time for sunshine and beaches. Although the water of the Puget Sound is a bit cold for swimming, the beaches are great for tide pooling.

Tides are the rising and falling of Earth’s ocean surfaces caused by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun. That is why low and high tides occur on a cyclical basis. Tides contribute to ocean currents as well.

If you would like to take a closer look at how tides work, try this. Take a ball of clay and make it as round as possible. This would represent the earth if there were no tides. Now indent it just a little bit on opposite sides. This represents the earth as it actually is. The indented sections show the two areas of the world having the lowest tides, and the ‘ends’ of the ball show where the highest tides would be. Everything in between would have fairly moderate tides. Next, use a globe to figure out which country is having low tides the same time we are. Which countries are having high tides when ours are low?

Low tides are pretty good for tide pooling in Washington the last part of this month. To maximize your viewing opportunities, try to be at the beach at least 30 minutes on either side of low tide. In other words, if low tide is at 10:19 a.m., you should be at the beach by 9:49 am and stay until 10:49 am. Some suggested dates to go tide pooling this summer are Wednesday through July 17 and July 28-31. Keep in mind that low tide times and heights depend on the beach you are visiting. For complete low tide information for each site and date you choose, use an Internet tool such as www.saltwatertides.com.

Living on Puget Sound, we have many wonderful beaches to explore during low tides. Here is a list of some area favorites: Titlow Beach (Tacoma), Salter’s Point (Steilacoom), Kopachuck State Park (Gig Harbor), Joemma Beach (Key Peninsula), Saltwater State Park (Des Moines), Purdy Spit (Purdy), Burfoot Park and Priest Point Park (Olympia) and Tolmie State Park (Lacey).

During your tide pool exploration of a beach in our area, you are likely to find quite a bit of diversity of life. Along with plants such as kelp and algae such as Turkish towel, you might find several kinds of sea stars, crabs and anemones. You should find at least one gunnel fish, often mistaken for eels, and other kinds of small fish such as sculpins. You might be lucky enough to find a chiton or a sea cucumber. And certainly you will see birds using the tidepools and nearby waters. Download a colored field guide of beach life you can use to explore a local beach at www.TacomaNatureCenter.org.

To learn more about the life you find along the shore, join one of the many programs offered by Harbor Wildwatch (www.harborwildwatch.org) or South Sound Estuary Association (www.facebook.com/SSEA.Center). Or, on Saturday (11 a.m.-2 p.m.) and July 30 (10 a.m.-1 p.m.), you can visit Titlow Beach at the western end of Sixth Avenue in Tacoma for a “Tiptoe through the Tidepools” event. Like most low tide events, there will be naturalists on hand to help visitors learn about tide pool life and touch-tanks for you to see the animals up close. If you cannot make it to a beach for tide pooling this summer, there are also many great aquariums in our area that showcase some of our local tide pool life – almost as good as the real thing. Plus, your feet stay dry.

Many people do not realize that proper beach exploration etiquette makes a huge difference for the animal life. Most of our beaches are located in preserves or parks where all life is protected. That means that no collecting is allowed. Taking one crab or cool rock off the beach may not seem like a big deal, but multiply that by the hundreds of people visiting a beach on a low tide day and you can imagine the impact.

Turning over rocks to look for critters is fun, but if the rock is not placed back carefully, whatever life is exposed will likely not survive as it dries out and burns in the sun. It is so easy to put the rocks back – why not do it and help the animals out?

Touching the animals can really add to the experience, but be careful. Crabs have pincers for a reason! And, it really helps the animals out if you wet your hands before touching.

Finally, it is best to leave the animals where they are instead of trying to pry them off a rock, or scoop them out of the water. Call your friend or family member over to you when you want to share something cool. Don’t remove an animal from it’s home to wave it around, they don’t like it anymore than you would.