I have spent my summer in the man-made tidepool that you see in the foreground, with the kelp forest just beyond, and Marina and Seaside in the background. The water is usually around 50 degrees Farenheit. If you were to swim around in there without the benefit of insulation, it would probably cause your extremities to go numb rather quickly, and make your body tingle. Last summer, we rescued an older gentleman who had fallen off his boat when I was working on the Baylis. He was in the water for less than 5 minutes, but already started to exhibit signs of hypothermia.

In other words, the water is fairly cold.

Access to the tidepool is limited to about 20 percent of the staff, and of course, the kids that we take in the Underwater Explorers program (which I will post about later).

Sometimes we get sea otters, sea lions, and other wildlife in the tidepool. It hasn't happened during a program this summer, but we have trained for contingencies in case it ever does.

As you may see, we get quite a crowd watching us from the decks. I feel sorry for the many adults who see kids exploring the Great Tide Pool who are not allowed to enroll in our program (or anyone who is not 8-13 years old, the ages for whom this program exists).

The Great Tidepool is an ideal place to get used to using SCUBA equipment because it is mostly sheltered from waves. There are times when this is not the case, but during the summer, we rarely have any problems with the waves getting too large.

As you might imagine, it's one of the most fun places to work in the Aquarium.

We went off of an area called the Highlands, to the outer edged of the kelp forest and the rocks. You can barely see the cutbacks that we had to scramble down to the lower right. The trail was pretty sketchy with all of our gear and weight.

The water is as cold as it looks, but with a 7mm wetsuit it's really not that bad. We stayed out for two and a half hours, and saw a lot of cool things including sheepheads, rockfish, perch, sunstars, huge green anemonies, and a lot more.


Zip ties come in handy in so many different situations, including strapping a knife to your inner calf.

Immediately after you get out of the water, you must tag your abalone to record where and when they were taken. If you catch abalone under the size limit (they must be at least 7 inches long), take too many (you can catch 3 per day, and you may only be in possession of no more than 3 at a time), or get caught without a license, DFG is entitled to confiscate your abalone, all of your diving gear, and your transportation.

To get them off of the rocks, you need to use a pry bar (pictured to the upper-right corner). To soften the flesh of this giant snail, it is best to hammer it.

A few interesting things about preparing and eating abalone:

*To gut them, you simply pry a small piece of connective tissue, attached from the top of the foot, away from the shell. After that, you can peel the guts and shell off of the foot.
*All of the abalone, minus the shell, is edible. My mom boiled the stomach of one with dashi, and it tasted like matsutake soup!
*When you remove the nerve center from the foot, the muscle will start to loosen up.
*When you pound live abalone steaks, they contract!
*If you use fresh water to clean an abalone, it will make the meat tough. Same goes for freezing the abalone or waiting too long to eat it.
*Fresh abalone tastes better than fresh calamari, IMHO.
*I suspect that it might take more calories to catch abalone than you get from eating them, that is if you dive for them in cold water.