Turning tides

June Casagrande

The moon and sun dance, intensifying then coyly relaxing their

attraction to each other, oblivious to the tiny universes created in

their footsteps.

Tide pools.

Perhaps here more than anywhere else, life appears to be a clear

accident of physics, a fluke of wantonly self-serving forces of nature

that cause the seas to rise and fall. With them, puddles form in the

rocks near the shore. In them live starfish, the very image of their

cosmic creators, and urchins, their spikes as electrifying as the gravity

that holds their home to the earth. Sea anemones, mussels, octopuses and

life forms too tiny to dazzle the human eye, but crucial to the balance

for all, thrive quietly.

And just as their existence may be accidental, so too is their

destruction. The uniqueness and allure of their world attract intruding

feet that destroy the rockweed, a basic element of life there.

Inquisitive, well-meaning, often tiny human hands pluck creatures from

their places, tearing off the starfish’s suction-cup feet, tearing away

their ability to sit and gather food, to survive.

Little Corona’s tide pools -- its puddles in rock -- once bustled with

the life the way Crystal Cove does now. Tide pools there teemed before

humans clumsily stumbled through these delicate domains. Now, there isn’t

much left to see.

But ironically, human intervention may prove to be the cure for human

intrusion. Destroyers will attempt to become creators when Newport Beach

manufactures its own universe, an artificial tide pool at Shellmaker

Island that’s part of a $4.5-million Marine Science Center slated to

house high-tech water quality labs and educational wonders like the

proposed tide pool.

Envision a place where children and adults can enjoy a front-row seat

for a habitat so incredible that no longer would anyone bother to trample

a poor, depleted place like Little Corona.

“The idea is that if you have a really, really nifty artificial tide

pool, maybe people will leave places like Little Corona alone and they’ll

come back to life,” said Orange Coast College Professor Dennis Kelly.

As chairman of the Marine Science Center at Orange Coast College,

Kelly helps oversee the closest thing the city now has to an artificial

tide pool -- the school’s aquarium, the largest in the county, and a

place where people can view sea life without intruding upon it.

But the artificial tide pool envisioned at Shellmaker is expected to

be a far more spectacular showcase for these dazzling creatures. And it

also will display some impressive scientific feats, all dedicated to the

hope of preserving the area’s rare natural wonders.

To create a tide pool, one must create tides. To make a home for tide

pool creatures like sea anemones, octopuses and mussels, humans must make

waves. And to mimic nature as closely as possible, science must employ

its wealth of knowledge to fabricate rock with crevices deep enough to

hold whole marine communities whose rooftops vary by four to six feet as

water levels rise and fall.

“It’s dumping seawater in something you’ve engineered on land, that

has the opportunity for coral to anchor, to replicate the tide pool in an

area that’s more controlled,” said Dave Kiff, Newport Beach assistant

city manager who is working closely with scientists and other government

agencies to create this artificial wonder.

Unlike the natural rise and fall of ocean waters caused by the cosmic

pull on the planet, these movements must be manufactured. Waves, too,

must be made by machines if the creatures dependent on ocean movements

are to live.

“It will probably look an awful lot like a real tide pool. There will

be artificial rock. There have to be pumps, a water storage system,

chillers -- it’s a pretty involved operation,” Kelly said. “But it’s not

like reinventing the wheel because it’s already been done at a number of

marine centers.”

The Newport Beach City Council approved the first phase of the Marine

Studies Center at its Oct. 9 meeting. The county, UC Irvine, the

Department of Fish and Game and the California Coastal Commission will

help fund the center. Not until its second phase is completed, probably

in 2003, will the tide pool be built.

Once the second phase of the project is underway, the city will look

to artificial tide pools already in existence at places like the Scripps

Aquarium in San Diego, the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro and the

Long Beach Aquarium for examples of ways to synthetically simulate the

magic of the natural world.

But all the scientific wisdom they borrow will never go as far as the

common wisdom they hope to promote beginning, of course, with children.

“We always try to tell kids that they’re in somebody else’s living

room,” said Jeannette Merrilees, a docent for the state parks department

who conducts monthly tide pool tours at Crystal Cove. “When we’re in

someone’s living room, how do we behave? We don’t move the furniture, we

don’t move the people. We even discourage them from picking up shells,

which could be homes for some animals.”

Like other tide pool experts, Merrilees believes that, with a little

education and understanding, people can enjoy tide pools while still

leaving them intact for generations to come.

“People are amazed what they can see there,” Merrilees said. “It

really is a wilderness.”

-- June Casagrande covers Newport Beach. She may be reached at (949)

574-4232 or by e-mail at o7 june.casagrande@latimes.comf7 .