Road Trip 2025 - Botanical Beach - Part 2

In my last post, Botanical Beach Part 1 introduced you to the wonderful world of tidal pools carved into sandstone that we found in Juan de Fuca Park near Port Renfrew along the Pacific Marine Circle Route on the western side of Vancouver Island. 

Botanical Beach, 2025, Juan de Fuca Park, Vancouver Island, BC

It's fascinating to realize that marine life lives in tidal pools that are covered by water for hours at a time, and then exposed to air when the tide is out. Twice a day, tide in, tide out, every day, as directed by the moon. Incredulous, really. So what treasures are hidden in the pools?

Botanical Beach, 2025, Juan de Fuca Park, Vancouver Island, BC

Tidal pools hold a myriad of life. Green anemone and purple sea urchins such as in the above photo live beside mussels and shells in this pool. I suspect the orange colour is a velvety red sponge, but since I'm not a marine biologist, it may even be an egg mass. And then there are the surprises, such as the dwarf mottled henricia of the sea star family. Can you see it near the purple sea urchin? I'll give you a closeup in the next image.

Botanical Beach, 2025, Juan de Fuca Park, Vancouver Island, BC

The dwarf mottled henricia is a sea star that is only 2 inches across and looks so small beside the 4 to 6 inch purple sea urchins nearby. And it's positively tiny when compared to the purple sea stars we found on our 1981 trip to Gabriola Island in the Strait of Georgia on the east side of Vancouver Island. Back then, we called them starfish and they were plump purple and reddish creatures the size of a human adult male's large hand. There were masses of them when the tide went out. 

Purple Sea Star, 1981, Gabriola Island, BC

When I was researching for our 2025 BC trip, I looked for best places to find the purple sea star. It was then that I discovered that back in 2013 the Pacific Ocean and waters connected to it, such as the Salish Sea near the Botanical Beach, and into the Strait of Georgia, warmed to such a degree that we lost a huge percentage of our sea star population due to a bacteria that caused sea star wasting disease. 

Purple Sea Stars, 1981, Gabriola Island, BC

The sea stars are recovering, and you may find them in abundance when the tide goes out on some beaches, but not to the extent we saw back in 1981 when the tide went out and a beautiful display of purple sea stars covered the island shore.

Botanical Beach, 2025, Juan de Fuca Park, Vancouver Island, BC

Jessie found an interesting tidal pool with purple sea urchins, limpets, gooseneck barnacles, mussels, and a little mossy chiton. You have to look close to see the mossy chiton as it's the green oval creature in the upper right part of the image to the right of the purple sea urchin. Due to its shape, it reminded me of a dust mop, but I recognized it from a video Nelson had taken of a couple other chitons.

Botanical Beach, 2025, Juan de Fuca Park, Vancouver Island, BC

In the above collage:

Upper left: The mossy chiton from Jessie's photo shows the mossy, rubber-like hairs that cover the flesh on either side of its 8 armour-like plates.

Lower left: A mossy chiton snuggled in a watery rock abscess in another of Jessie's photos.

Right side top and bottom: Screenshots from Nelson's video that shows 2 mossy chitons. Both are partly submerged, and both show their poo pellets. 

Botanical Beach, 2025, Juan de Fuca Park, Vancouver Island, BC

This image of Nick pointing into a tidal pool attracted me because of the textured sandstone bottom. It reminded me of the textured bottom of the pools in the Japanese Garden that we visited on our tour of the Butchart Gardens a few posts ago. Upon zooming in to where Nick was pointing, I saw a mossy chiton similar to the one in the bottom left of the mossy chiton collage above. 

Botanical Beach, 2025, Juan de Fuca Park, Vancouver Island, BC

In the foreground of the above photo, aggregating anemones seem to be guarding the tidal pool. These anemones live in colonies and paralyze their prey with stinging cells on their tentacles. It's one reason you should never explore a tidal pool by hand. Also shown are limpets clinging to the rocky walls, mussels lining the bottom, and graceful coral seaweed clinging to the wall near the top of the photo. 

Botanical Beach, 2025, Juan de Fuca Park, Vancouver Island, BC

I found the above image of seaweeds fascinating. You can even see a hermit crab's legs sticking out from under the shell in the centre of the photo. Below is the same image with outlines and a legend.

Botanical Beach, 2025, Juan de Fuca Park, Vancouver Island, BC

With Crystal's help, the above image shows items I've outlined that I found to be the most intriguing. The following legend corresponds to the outlined image above.

Red outlines- sea grapes or sea sacs

Blue outlines - rockweed

Pink outline - graceful coral seaweed 

Yellow outline - hermit crab hiding under a shell (3 legs visible)

Botanical Beach, 2025, Juan de Fuca Park, Vancouver Island, BC

Nick took this photo of what I thought was a slug but is actually a sea lemon. Acorn barnacles that are in the top right corner and dotted throughout the image look small, so I researched the sea lemon and found it grows up to 15 cm/6 in long. No wonder it caught Nick's eye. 

Botanical Beach, 2025, Juan de Fuca Park, Vancouver Island, BC

Although we have so many more wonderful photos of life in the sandstone tidal pools, I'll end this post with another image of Botanical Beach when the tide is out. Note the fallen, weathered tree in the top middle of the photo which will be featured in the next post. And then note the size of the people. Botanical Beach is huge, and there was even more to see and do. Our kids like climbing and the next post will show that rock climbing is part of this park's adventure.

This is Part 2 of 3 Botanical Beach posts describing our exploration of the Juan de Fuca Park tidal pools and shore of the Salish Sea on the west side of Vancouver Island.

Check out Part 3 when it's posted next week.

Botanical Beach posts correspond to the March calendar page.