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Swami’s |
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The Tide Pools No booklet such as this can do justice to a study of the tide pools. Publications available at bookstores, at Sea World, or at the Stephen Birch Aquarium would serve much better. Consult a tide table for the best day and time to visit the area and war shoes (that will get wet) to protect your feet on the reefs. One urgent plea – leave the fragile tide pools as they were when you arrived. Take pictures. Don’t remove any of the plant or animal specimens or their remnants. Do take away any obvious human-left trash you can handle. The tidal zones are those regions of a beach that are affected by the rise and fall of the tides. In a practical sense, with respect to plants and animals, we are concerned with the reefs and rocky shores – since the sand shifts constantly and doesn’t provide any permanent point of attachment. Since we are thinking of the region between that which is exposed only at the lowest tides to the points on the shore that are reached by splash and/or spray at the highest tides, we should expect to find quite different life forms at these tow extremes and a transition of diverse organisms between. Some plants and some animals range across two or more of the zones.
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