About theoutershores

theoutershores is my intertidal journal

Its posts and pages chronicle my experiences, discoveries and lessons learned on Northern Oregon’s beaches and rocky shores. Its origins go back to my habit of fishing the Oregon surf where it’s safe to say Oregon’s surfperches were my closest companions and my gateway to the intertidal. Having once stepped through, I fished less and photographed more, and the lessons of sea wrack and Alloniscus on the backshore gave partial way, by sunrise, to periwinkle poetry and slithery seaweed sermons. My journal today has more of an eye toward images that convey a feeling of the place than when I started theoutershores over 10 years ago.

How it’s organized

Wrack line. I built my Wrack Line page to curate my photos of sea wrack and other drifted material, along with tentative identifications, oddities, mysteries, and occasional truths revealed by the drift. It has a menu of links to annual wrack line galleries from 2012 to the present. To get a feeling for what one of my yearly wrack line pages looks like, click here or on the image of beached barnacles to see galleries of items I found washed ashore in 2023.

Taxonomic galleries. My journey from combing the beaches to discovering seaweeds, animals, and plants living on exposed beaches and rocky intertidal habitats was an awakening. Now I rarely fish the surf, and theoutershores is bursting with pages detailing the diversity of life I’ve been fortunate enough to discover on exposed northern Oregon shores. These pages are how I keep track of seaweeds and other creatures I’ve photographed and either identified or been foiled at trying. They’re home to my photographic takes on the species I love and their habitats as I see them on the shore, with as much context as I can muster; they’ll always be incomplete, but growing, and, inevitably, wanting for updates and corrections. In A Variety of Intertidal Life, you’ll find links to pages on everything from seaweeds to snails and sponges. For example, click here or on the image of Pelvetiopsis to travel over to my page on brown seaweeds.

My blog. The blog component of theoutershores is just me showing off pretty intertidal scenes and writing a few words about them. The pair of images below are linked to two recent posts. Click on them to have a look.

Limpets and barnacles partially illuminate on the shady side of a California mussel. Gooseneck barnacles behind.
From Brushes With Backlight
Drifted stump resembling a pig's head emerging from the sand.
From A Moment of Bog Wood and Big Atmosphere

If you find yourself over on my homepage, down near the bottom you’ll find a well-named but underused search bar I call Beachcombing theoutershores. It’s pretty good for searching theoutershores’ content.

Contact me. My contact page invites your suggestions, thoughts, or questions.

The name

theoutershores is a gangly compound word that describes the exposed shores it’s my good fortune to visit, and surf-swept shores anywhere. I feel like if a word is going to have meaning to people who visit or daydream about exposed intertidal places anywhere in the world, it’s theoutershores. Its uncompounded form traces faintly to a book idea put forth by Ed Ricketts, inspired by his collecting trips to the west coast of Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii in the summers or 1945 and 1946, in Rickett’s words “…a smaller Sea of Cortez.” (Hedgpeth 1978, Part 1; pg. 52). Closer to home, I appropriated my site’s name from Joel Hedgepth’s The Outer Shores, a two-part edited compilation of papers, letters and other materials by or about Ricketts which also takes its name from the Ricketts book proposal. I was an impressionable graduate student when I read Rickett’s Essay on Non-teleological Thinking (Hedgpeth 1978, Part 2 pgs. 161-170). It was the first time I’d been exposed to ideas about living in the present versus off in a world that should be or could be. The Outer Shores wasn’t my first brush with Hedgpeth.  Ten years before publication of The Outer Shores, he revised and wrote the preface (it was the first time I connected with a preface!) to the Fourth Edition of Between Pacific Tides (1968), the book I carried with me to the tide pools when, as a sophomore, my zoology class took a field trip to Point Pinos. My tide pool preparations led to lots of discoveries on the pages of Between Pacific Tides, some now forgotten, one that stuck with me was the nudibranch Hermissenda crassicornis, ““most lovely of the eolids,” according to MacFarlands).” The color plate dazzled, and my ears still love the complexity and rhythm of the name. When I blue-highlighted “Although variable in color, Hermissenda always has a clear blue line around the sides…” I didn’t know that forty years would elapse between my discovery of Hermissenda on the pages of Between Pacific Tides and my real-life discovery of it on the Oregon coast.

theoutershores is my hobby’s online expression

In the real world, I spent a career dabbling in decision analysis with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service where I helped managers make natural resource conservation decisions they understood and could explain. In Uncertainty and the Endangered Species Act, way back in 2008, Teresa Woods and I urged managers to be more explicit about the probabilistic nature of Endangered Species Act Decisions. I never quit beating that drum. In Implicit Decision Framing as an Unrecognized Source of Confusion in Endangered Species Classification, Jonathan Cummings, Sarah Converse, Dave Smith, Mike Runge, and I argued that when participants in an Endangered Species Act listing decision adopt privately held framings they create a wellspring of confusion and conflict and that follows the decision throughout its life. We think this happens a lot, so we encouraged decision participants to build shared problem framing from the outset.

Good Endangered Species Act decisions forge connections between decision makers and the science and scientists that help them understand risk, especially extinction risk. Managers and scientists walk a winding and largely misunderstood two-way street. Improving conservation policy with genomics: a guide to integrating adaptive potential into U.S. Endangered Species Act decisions for conservations practitioners is a primer for decision makers wishing to understand how adaptive potential influences risk, and for conservation geneticists seeking insights into the twists and turns of decision making under the Endangered Species Act, and their unique role. I’m grateful to Chris Funk, Brenna Forester, Sarah Converse, and Cat Darst for inviting me to participate. Finally, Minimizing extinction risk in the face of uncertainty: Developing conservation strategies for 2 rapidly declining forest bird species on Kaua‘i Island came out in 2021, a few months before I retired. It’s an antidote to decision paralysis in the face of uncertainty. Eben Paxton, Lisa Crampton, John Vetter, Megan Laut, Lainie Berry and I show that you can make conservation decisions even when the situation is dire and you don’t have much information.

Back on the Beach

I want to keep to a light touch out there, which is to say I want to discover much and harm little. This means I don’t flip rocks–a personal rule that’s pretty easy to live up to—beyond that, things get fuzzy. I want to avoid handling or touching my discoveries for their sake and because I love photographing and walking away from seaweeds and intertidal animals, leaving them exactly as I found them, untouched and undisturbed, if there is such a thing. (But I will pluck a delicate blade from an inscrutable seaweed and float it in a finger bowl for a better look.) My preference is to stay off the rocks, but I’ve felt and heard the crunch of calcified shells giving way under my boots. If I never hear it again, that will be fine with me, but as tradeoffs go, I probably will hear it, even though I’ve learned it will rob me of joy and connection to the place.

If this sounds like high-minded morality, I’m not preaching; I’m putting it down, appropriately, I think, because the weights I place on two competing objectives—maximizing discovery and minimizing harm—shape my practices on the shore and what theoutershores looks and feels like. Intertidal creatures pay a price for me just walking the beaches, let alone scrambling around and occasionally over the rocks. I feel like the price needs to be honored, but that’s a promised land to which I haven’t found a path. For now, I’ll settle for acknowledging the tradeoffs made and prices paid. They’re in the soup, as they say, every time one of us sets a foot on the shore.

Dropping by theoutershores means seeing the shore through my eyes, and that’s something beyond acknowledging the tradeoffs I mentioned above. You won’t have to dig hard to see my inexperience shine through; you’ll see gaps, questions, mistakes, odd interpretations, and all. That used to be intimidating for me, and it still is, a little, but with luck and the grace of the people who visit, theoutershores has grown into a peaceful place where learning and growth, and appreciation and gratitude for nature are valued, and where everybody is welcome. Extending the idea of seeing the shore through my eyes, I would love it if my photographic interpretations, and even my words (allowing their quirks, and imperfections), could help the occasional visitor see and experience the shore in ways that are best for them. Since I’m here anyhow, if my posts and pages can do that, or help even a single person expand their perspectives on the shore and its creatures, cycles, and connections, well, that would be pretty cool.

See you on the shore,
Steve


References

Hedgpeth, Joel W. (editor). 1978. The Outer Shores. Part I (Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck Explore the Pacific Coast); Part 2 (Breaking Through). From the Papers of Edward F. Ricketts. Introduced and edited by Joel W. Hedgpeth. Mad River Press.

I revised this page on April 14, 2024

43 Comments

  2. Really beautifully compiled, Steve. Used to live in Astoria, Oregon. Love beaches. Anywhere, everywhere. Looking forward to reading through your posts. Thanks for being meticulous in identifying the flora and fauna you’ve encountered!

    Reply

  3. Wonderful blog Steve. I am learning a lot from your posts. Great photos. I am writing from Parksville on the east coast of Vancouver Island. This is a protected inland sea. But in 2 hours I can drive to the west side of the island which is exposed to the open ocean like the Oregon Coast. Any sign of the sea star wasting syndrome in your area?

    By the way, how do you make the snowflakes sweep across the screen?
    Hans from “Boerger West Coast Nature”

    Reply

    2. Oh, forgot the winter snowflakes. Sorry, I’m not much help. It’s a WordPress feature. I got a notice last year asking if I wanted winter snowflakes and I clicked yes. This year they just appeared without my doing anything.

      Reply

  4. Huh! It’s like reading a running monologue of what my eyes are seeing everyday. I found a blob of what looked like an alien embryo just today. Must have been a .. What was it again? A yelp?
    Used to live in Astoria, but have scoured most of the Oregon coast and now reside in Humboldt County, south of the border (of Oregon) and am finding new things. Washed up sea squirts, teeny intertidal octopuses swimming in tiny tidepools, you heard me, octopuses, not “octopi”, but I digress….
    Favorite finds – giant shells (tiny ones on East coast called jingle shells. What ARE they? )
    Always looking for nudibranchs. Found a couple with white frosted blades on their backs.
    Found a Teeny bright purple snail shaped shell at Cape Blanco in May. Heard it was a floating pelagic mollusk. Never saw one like it before in my life.
    Thanks for writing this account. Will stay glued from now on.
    Recently collecting gaping fish jaws from Trinidad harbor, tossed by fishermen, washed up and picked clean by the birds, left staring with that startled look of the hollow eyed ones, sharp teeth at the ready. Some with toothy palates. Found that put by unwisely putting finger in inviting looking fish mouth.
    My place smells funny when the fog sweeps through the windows, due to all the “dried” seaweed I have hanging picturesquely from the walls.
    Ok I’ll stop now, with just a nod to all the sea sponges laying around Port Orford’s “agate beach”.
    Thanks again and if anyone has tips on drying a cartilaginous “skeleton” of something, or drying whole bird heads, please let me know. Cats are starting to press their noses to my living room window because of the various aromas.

    Reply

  5. Thanks for posting these articles and images. I am also a fan of the beach, tide pools and beach combing. The beaches and tide pools in Oregon are very different from the ones in California where I am from. I find it fascinating to see the differences and on many occasions the similarities between the two locations. Thanks again for posting. I have a similar website about California tide pools that I would like to share if allowed. Here is the link: http://californiatidepools.com/

    Reply

  6. Wow! I’m jealous being landlocked myself at the moment. I grew up on the coast and can’t wait to pay it a visit later this month!!

    Reply

  9. Happy New Year Steve and thanks so much for posting this website. We live on the east coast coast now and really miss those northwestern Pacific coast beaches. So much energy! Thanks for helping us keep the beautiful Pacific alive In our thoughts.

    Reply

  11. I was not born by the sea and do not have it close by. I love the sound though, and when I am visiting Iceland or other islands, I find great comfort in the rolling waves and the sky. You have some great photos and a very ambitious concept. Thank you for visiting.

    Reply
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  14. Hi Steve! I’m loving your work. I have only just come across your site, looking for pictures of sargassum on Google, but I will definitely follow you now. I am on the west coast of Ireland and I have been building http://www.wildatlanticseagarden.com for the past year. When people complain to me about the grey background, I will show them your beautiful blog as an example of the way forward. Thanks a million. Please keep doing what you are doing. All the best. Jenny

    Reply

    1. Jenny, I finally got around to checking out
      your site. It’s a whole new world to me. I’ve never seen so many kelp and seaweed products. I’ve had an enjoyable morning browsing the offerings. You’ve done a great job building an attractive and friendly website. I’ll be following along on twitter and fb.

      Reply

  15. Steve,
    You may recall that you graciously gave me the go-ahead to use one of your redtail surfperch photos in a forthcoming book. Now I’d like to use that photo in our magazine and we’ll actually pay you for that (I have your mailing address, but no email for you)…can you shoot me an email? Thanks, John

    Reply

  16. Thanks for the follow on my photography blog Steve! I was just looking back at some of your photos and picked out one I just loved – ‘A Clean Drift Line’, and possibly even more so the header on this page!

    Reply
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  18. Just found your beautiful, well made blog, through the weekly photo challenge at The Daily Post. Looking forward to see more posts.

    Reply

  21. I stumbled upon this blog whilst trying to identify a beach isopod and my mouth is agape as I read and browse through all the posts. I spend as much free time as I can beach-combing and I use my “Whelks to Whales” beach guide. But this is an incredible resource and inspires me to keep looking closer and closer. Always so nice to stumble upon kindred spirits! Thank you

    Reply

    1. Hey there, Jessica. I glad to hear you found me. Thanks for taking the time to drop me a line. Whelks to Whales is a great friend of mine too. If you get to walk the beaches a lot, you’re a lucky person. Isn’t it amazing just how many interesting things are just waiting to be discovered? Good luck with your isopod!- Steve

      Reply

  23. Hey Steve,
    I forwarded your question about the octopus you posted recently to a friend who worked for years at the Zoo with Octopi and here is her response:

    I was not able to comment directly to your friend, but the diagnostic characteristic that distinguishes a red octopus from a young giant Pacific octopus is the presence of three papillae or ‘fingers’ below each eye. I can’t tell if they are present or not from the photo. I’ve found more reds than GPO’s in PNW tidepools, though. I have a photo of this diagnostic somewhere in my bloated marine photo file; I’ll search if he wants it.
    I’ll see if I can get your site over to her so you can connect. She loves critters too!

    Reply

  24. Greetings!
    My husband and I love the Oregon coast! Although we live in Arizona we’ve been walking these beaches for almost 2 decades, and mostly around Thanksgiving time. I just spent some time on your awesome website, thank you for providing so many beautiful views and interesting angles to places we hold dear.
    I have one question – we just came home the other week from our most recent trip and my hubby is working on our travel blog. He took a photo of what looked like dotted squiggly lines in the sand. Do you have any idea what could have caused these? I could share the photo with you if you’re curious.
    Thank you for all your efforts in documenting the Oregon shores,
    Caroline

    Reply

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