High Tide, Low Tide

One advantage of living within walking distance of the ocean, is that I can go look at it whenever I like. When there is a minus tide in the afternoon, it becomes a community event. Parents bring their kids to go tide-pooling. People walk their dogs on the beach instead of on the cliff walk above the beach. At Moran State Beach, people walk along with a baggie to collect pieces of beach glass from among the pebbles. This week, we have had some of the highest tides of the year, along with some of the lowest. For Wednesday afternoon’s low tide, I took a walk at Moran, and found about a dozed pieces of glass worth picking up. One woman stayed in the same spot and had filled a sandwich bag with bits of brown, green and clear glass. For those of you wondering what people do with the beach glass, it’s usually put in glass jars or bowls as a decoration, and larger pieces are often fashioned into jewelry. Capitola Village has a whole store of beach glass jewelry.

Thursday was even better- both the high tide (a +6.8 or 7) was at 9:30 am, and a low tide (-1.7) was at 4:30 pm. It’s rare to have such high and low tides both during daylight hours. This year the term “king tide” has reached this area, and the newspapers have had headlines about the King Tides this week. It’s an Australia / New Zealand term for exceptionally high tides. Facebook has had pictures from all over this area of flooded beach area roads, trails, etc. I took my camera for a walk first to Pleasure Point. I’ve seen waves like this before, but that was during a storm. No storm yesterday. Beautiful weather, in fact, although it was pretty chilly till around 10, and after 5. Here are some of my better shots at Pleasure Point.

This home’s owner probably wasn’t enjoying the waves as much as I was.

During normal high tides, you can still usually walk on the sand without getting wet.

I had to wait quite awhile to get this shot.

I also saw a pair of otters playing just beyond the breakers. I’ve seen otters here many times, probably the same ones.

My best telephoto picture of the pair of otters

One of the otters dove.

I then walked over to Pleasure Point Park, where I ran into my friend and neighbor, Susie. We talked and walked along the cliff while I took pictures. I came back at 4 and walked the cliff again, taking pictures in some of the same places. The rest of this post is a photo essay of high and low tide pictures.

Cliff view of the stairs down to the beach at Pleasure Point Park

Same stairs at low tide.

Waves crashing against the recently completed seawall.

I really love all the spray

Low tide. See how many people are walking around. Storms a couple of weeks ago washed most of the sand away. The rock strata are nearly flat here.

A real neighborhood beach party!

38th Ave. stairs at high tide.

The stairs at 38th Ave, low tide.

This tall, green cliff-hugging house belongs to Jack O’Neill. If you have ever surfed or owned a wetsuit, you know who he is. He just built this new seawall below his house this year.

I’m standing by the bench in the park next to O’Neill’s. Surfer’s use this park to access the water without the steep cliff.

You can see to the right of the main spray below O’Neill’s house, there is a second small jet of water. That’s coming from a blowhole built into the new seawall.

Here are the blowhole entrances from the beach at low tide.

And one last picture. Giant squid were beaching themselves on many beaches near here last week. Near 38th Ave. was one of the locations. I saw a couple hundred remains of squid bodies on the beach. I’ll spare you pictures of them, but I enjoyed seeing the very happy gulls who were gorging themselves on the abundance of food.

 

 

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