Last week was our second annual trip to the Heceta Head Lighthouse beach- otherwise known as Mile 179, or, the Bear Creek Explorer’s very own adopted beach! We had a successful early start and arrived right on time at 9:30am to take advantage of low tide.
After a slight detour to help a poor lady who had fallen and broken her ankle, Denise Harrington of Oregon Shores led us in an exploration of the tide pools.
After learning a little about seaweed and mussels last year, we wanted to try harvesting a little of both these abundant ocean resources for our afternoon snack. I had never harvested or even eaten mussels before, so I was grateful to have Denise as our guide. First, though, we explored.
So many rich textures and forms of sea life.
Mussels come in all sizes, and seaweed comes in many shapes and colors.
With leather gloves for protection, the advice was to select middle-sized mussels and no more than we wanted to eat.
Many mussels came with barnacles,
like this gooseneck barnacle that is apparently a choice delicacy.
Some mussels were an entire ecosystem all to themselves!
Besides the requirement to arrive at low tide, it’s hard to imagine animal food sources so abundant and easy to harvest. There’s no lying in wait quietly for hours with your bow and arrow, hoping for a sighting.
The vegetarians in the group were much more interested in harvesting seaweed. Denise had a handy guide to what is tasty.
We sampled as we harvested, grateful that there aren’t really toxic seaweeds- apparently just more desirable and less so. I think the one I tried was a sugar seaweed, but, we agreed it tasted like salty rubber. Not bad though! Probably incredible if you were truly hungry.
As the harvesting wrapped up, we continued exploring and found starfish.
Denise showed us how they will grab onto your arm hairs, even from their topside!
Such mysterious, strange, and wondrous creatures live in the sea.
Coastal ecology is fascinating, but not an area where I have much knowledge. (Yet.) I love having an expert with us to answer all our questions and point out things we might not notice. Hard to imagine a better expert to explore with than Denise Harrington! Suddenly, it seemed, the tide was coming in, and we had to run to save our bucket of mussels and shoes.
Some of us climbed deep into a cave that last year was filled with sea foam. This year it was dry, but it challenged some of us to push through claustrophobia. Thinking about what would happen if the ceiling collapsed made my stomach turn a little, so I reassured the kids that I was keeping one hand on the roof of the cave at all times to prevent this. (For some reason, they did not find this comforting.)
After that, it was time for food and drink. When someone forgets their water bottle, it takes teamwork to stay hydrated.
Everyone found a way to enjoy some free time mid-day in the sun. Rheah brought a kite…
And Ruani brought an RC car! I regret forgetting to ask him if I could take it for a spin.
Over my years of working with kids outdoors, it has been fun to observe how different people are with sensory experiences. You give a group of kids clay, and one will decide to cover their entire body. Another will touch it for a few moments with the tips of their fingers, then ask to wash up. Sand is another love it or hate it sensory experience. When it comes to sand and water, we learned, Gavin is all in.
By the time lunch break was over, the burial of Gavin was almost complete. We all gathered round for a short eulogy before the resurrection and afternoon science activity.
Next, it was time for the marine debris field survey. We follow a specific protocol to collect human-made or modified objects in 5-meter transects at random locations within our 100-meter zone. Today we had four teams of two, including someone who joined us for the mile meetup, and Laura (Ru and Rheah’s mom), who joined us for the day.
Last year, we didn’t find much debris. This year was similar. We’re a little sad that we don’t get to practice categorizing trash, and… we’re happy that our little beach is so clean!
It’s fun to find things that look like trash, but might actually be natural. We all assumed something was a paper straw wrapper, but Denise had us circle up and look more closely. It was hard to believe, but we eventually decided it was most likely a piece of sun-bleached grass.
I had never heard of these little guys until last year, but another ‘debris’ discovery that is actually natural is these Velella Velella (By-the-Wind-Sailors) that apparently come in right or left-handed orientations, depending on where on a clockface their sails attach. I’m intrigued and want to learn more.
This little fuzzy guy showed up early in the day, “What are you doing on the beach?!?’ And then again later in the afternoon. Maybe they wanted to join the Bear Creek Explorers? I’ll have to consider whether we could use a silver-spotted tiger moth in our research team.
After the debris survey, it was time to clean and cook the mussels.
Ru gathered us fresh pine tips for a garnish.
Denise let us use her propane stove and taught us how to tell when they’re cooked and how to remove the beard.
It was a quiet, peaceful part of the day as us three adults enjoyed cooking and conversation. It almost brought me back to BCE OG when two of the moms would join us each week in the woods.
Meanwhile, the kids went swimming.
Once our mussel feast was ready, they came back- and some were brave enough to try these unusual-looking morsels. Gavin was experienced and insisted that he liked to eat the big ones.
And to his credit, he did!
Personally, I was surprised by how delicious they were. I would choose the mid-sized ones, fully cooked to a bright orange. Like magic, Laura produced a fresh baguette with avocado to complete the feast!
On the way out, we visited a midden on the back bank near the parking lot. Denise told us the native peoples of this area would toss their food scraps in piles, safely away from the streams. We saw the layer where people harvested mussels, then a large layer of clear sand and dirt. It’s a record of the time when the local inhabitants lived in balance with nature, harvesting the abundant foods from the ocean, and then the disruption of those ancient traditions with colonization and displacement.
For me, it was an incredibly enriching experience to learn a little more about ocean life and taste some of the foods that the ancestors of this land depended on.
What a fabulous day! Let’s do it again next year.
Great description of your day, Jess! Thanks for sharing.