Littoral Zone

Sit down.  You're going to get a short, essential education in this missive, there is no use trying to escape.  Scream if you must, it will do you no good.  Between the wide wide ocean and the furthest furthest shore is the geographic area known as the littoral zone, which extends from the land to about six hundred feet out to blue water.  This is divided into three parts, as are most sensible things.  Example: bread, stuff in the middle, bread.  See?

These three described areas include the supralittoral, which is the water from the highest point of tide towards inland; intertidal is the space between high tide and low tide; and sublittoral runs from the low tide zone out to ocean for 200 meters, about an eighth of a mile.  I am not dealing with the sublittoral at the moment, for that's where the sharks live and like to stay unless you are a dopey kid swimming by the Florida Gulf shore at sundown whereas an aggressive bull shark may shove itself into the intertidal zone and grab you by the arm.  Luckily, this kid's uncle, who didn't think a shark would beach itself for a warm, juicy 9-year-old, grabbed a chunk of driftwood, jammed it into the mouth of the animal and pulled.  Most of the boy was saved.

When I lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, there was a beach several blocks away separated from the mainland by a stretch of water.  At the time, access was public; you just had to look for openings in the seawalls between the shell shops and motels which led to miles of sand along the Gulf Coast.  At the end of the supralittoral zone, high tide reached an apex, marked by piles of drying sea grass that had been pushed into scalloped edges, trim for the frothy flounces of salt water traced in sand.

Pen shells, calico scallops, and cockles were strewn along the edge of tide as if a sea parade had left behind molluscan confetti.  I couldn't get more than a foot before I would be on my knees, poking through layers of shells to find miniatures of whelks and bright orange pectens to put into my basket.
If a storm hit, the wild waves cast pieces of finger sponges colored vivid red, orange, and purple; these weren't worth saving and would rot on the back stairs if I tried to dry them.  Still, they were fascinating.   I had not seen such things before, and the shoreline introduced so so much of a contrary briny universe to people, to both the visitors and natives who had lived there since childhood.  The enchantment just didn't wear away.

Walking closer to the intertidal zone, small breathing holes told where coquinas, the tiny butterfly clams, were burying themselves as fast as they could if the next wave washed away their sand.  Terns and sandpipers would bobble, heads down;  a keen eye watching for these bubbling holes which meant lunch.  These tiny clams, no larger than 3/4 inch, could be gathered and made into broth, and the multi-striped sunset shells were often glued into mosaic pictures by the locals.  I kept a small hinged box full, and have them still.  They remind me of many things.

By this time, you were wet up to your ankles and if you went to the sloped water's edge, there were small stingrays and white ghost crabs sloshing about as each nutrient rich wave hit.  Wear old sneakers or those fancy water sandals and shuffle along, warning the stingrays that you are coming.  Here you might find a shell before it was tossed ashore, a roller whelk or strombus; larger crabs scuttled sideways and demonstrating their claw size by waving testily, so watch it.  Dead jellyfish would be spectacular in iridescent colors, but for god's sake, don't touch for the stingers still hold active venom.    Even a dried one is to be given a wide berth.  The cannonball jelly has an antigen that reduces arthritic pain, and jellies have also been used as a food source by the Chinese for thousands of years.  I'm not messing with them, thank you.

Further down the Gulf coast was DeSoto National Park, where the warmest water I have ever been in flowed over rippled sand.  Shallow with miniscule wavelets, it was warm bath water, and as I sat, neon blue pipefish, (they look like a seahorse that sneezed itself straight), came over to see what I was and softly nipped at me, the group not coming to consensus one way or the other.  It felt like tiny pops against skin, and shushing them away did not prevent their return to continue nosing at me.  An interrupted crab broke up the party, a beautiful, spotty thing, who did that angry claw waving business and chased this interloper out of Crabland.  It was time to start dinner anyways.  I walked by white cranes and red hibiscus to the dry sand, but the message that the pipefish told me remains inside, happy.

Ducks with bright blue bills would dive under the water of Tampa Bay, to reappear yards past the original position, usually with a small fish as prize.  Washed up would be cavernous horseshoe crabs, starfish, or shark egg cases called mermaid's purses.  Chains of whelk egg cases, pieces of fish skeleton,  bladderwort, periwinkles, King's crown shells, fossilized shark teeth; all mysteries were laid out before me, I was undone.  I will go back to live there some day, when I am done with apple trees and lilacs.

Someday you shall see the dolphins play, leaping through the wake of a boat or rising from the depths for air.  Watch a lazy, tall fin weave idly back and forth as a shark meanders just below surface, looking...looking.  The sun sets in an explosion of fiery cloud, making you believe that you will live forever if only in the molecules of salt, or perhaps in the heart of a tiny, blue, nosey fish, as beautiful as any stolen jewel yet more so, for it contains the song of life.   Mother ocean, father sea.

Tonight in this latitude, the Arctic air is arriving to tell us that we are not such a big deal and to zip up that coat.  The cats are glad to be inside as am I.  Time for bedding down, to swim in the waves of sleep as each stage of slumber is cued for entrance.  Be warm, human heart, be safe.  Dive under to face your dreams, return again to later rise with the day.  Sleep well, taste salt; wild one.