# 🪸 TIDE POOLING Trinidad State Beach North end is College Cove Beach Patrick’s Point State Park https://baynature.org/article/how-to-tidepooling/ For tidepooling, you are looking for a low tide (trough) during daylight hours and if the low point is below +1.5 ft you are able to tidepool (weather permitting) at all of our locations. Tidepooling is best at low tide, especially if it is a negative low tide with little to no surf. The lower the tide, the farther out you can explore and the more species you can see. Tides do not change instantly, so come and enjoy an hour or more exploring! There are usually two low tides and two high tides in one day. You should go early enough for the tide pools to still be cold. The first low tide of the day is the best for seeing cool critters. The closer to dawn, the better. Low tides of 0.3 feet or lower are good bets. Any morning tides into the negatives are worth planning for. Plan your trip to center around the low tide. If you arrive 30 minutes before the low tide and leave 30 minutes after, you’ll get to appreciate all the lowest parts of the tide. Ricketts’s Between Pacific Tides or Steinbeck and Rickett’s Log from the Sea of Cortez, Wobbegongs - carpet shark The tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon on the earth. The moon’s gravity forces the oceans to bulge out in a high tide. As the earth rotates, the bulge of water is pulled away from the moon, causing a low tide. The time it takes for the water to be pulled away and then back again is about 12 hours and 25 minutes. However, the earth is also rotating on its axis, so it takes a little longer for the bulge of water to come back around to where the moon is. This “latency” is about 50 minutes. So, each day, the high tide is 50 minutes later than the day before. Tides are controlled by the moon and sun and their position relative to your location. Full moons and new moons create “spring tides” creating higher high tides and lower low tides, with these extra-low low tides giving us the best tidepooling. Quarter moons create “neap tides” which are not as extreme, but still allow tidepooling if conditions are favorable. If you can tailor your trip around a full or new moon you will be able to tidepool every day. Tide Apps Tide Alert (NOAA) - Tide Chart