Tide Pooling: My Final Reflection on the Reefs

It seemed like there was death everywhere on the reef where I should have seen life.  The brilliant colors in books, the swimming fish from advertisements for the Bahamas- there were barely any to be found.

Occasionally, a member of our group would marvel at a baracuda or a parrot fish.  Sometimes, we would eye a few maze-like brain coral living in a small area.  But mostly, all I saw was algae.  Turtle grass would float into my hair or stick to my wetsuit. The waves mixed the sand up to obscure my vision of anything worth noting.  It looked dirty to me even though, from above the surface, everything looked clear and blue.

Aren't coral reefs supposed to be the "rainforests of the sea?"  Where were the colors and all the life that the reef should be teeming with.

With nothing to compare these reefs to, I had no sense of loss.  

Then, one night, in the dark, our team went tidal pooling.  The tide was headed out and ocean water settled in the crevices of large rocks on the beach.  I saw life that had been hidden from me.

Spiny sea urchins clustered under small awnings in the rock.  Anemones swayed their short tentacles.  I could see a small round hole, its mouth, in the center of its spherical body.  

One miniature tide pool hosted a couple dozen tiny hermit crabs.  I crouched low to observe them, pointing my headlamp in their direction.  I watched, fascinated, as they crawled carefully about the pool.  After a few long moments, I saw something interesting; it looked like bubbles were coming in spurts from the rock. 

"I need a science person!"  I called to the teammates.  "What's this?  Look at the bubbles.  It looks like something is blowing air down there."

After studying hard for a minute, I heard the diagnosis, "You found an octopus!" "Look there's his arm." "And there's his eye."

As I moved away from the group that was gathering to see, I thought about how alive the reef really was.  How much of this life that I'm seeing now had been missed due to my unappreciative attitude towards the reef?

The next day, when we entered the water to take our data, I found so much life that I hadn't noticed before.  Even in the midst of all the death I was witnessing, I was finally aware of the beauty still present in what had survived.