Biodiversity at the Edge of the Sea
Fitzgerald Marine Reserve
is a place to investigate the diversity of life in the sea. Low tides expose
rocky pinnacles, reefs, and pools that are home to hundreds of kinds of
animals and algae.
The Reserve is described as a semi-protected, outer coast, rocky intertidal habitat. The protection derives from a series of offshore subtidal reefs and rocky terraces that blunt the full impact of incoming waves that regularly batter the coastline. The reef consists of various kinds of sedimentary rock that are twisted and worked by geological processes through time, and are constantly weathered by wave action. These powerful forces sculpted varied surfaces -- tidal flats strewn with boulder fields, craggy outcroppings, deep surge channels with undercut banks, and tidal pools of a variety of sizes and depths. This highly diverse topography combined with the Reserve’s protected setting, allows for a myriad of nooks and crannies for organisms to attach and find shelter. Not surprisingly, Fitzgerald Marine Reserve is noted by many as one of the richest, most biodiverse intertidal environments on the California coast.
Many visitors to the Reserve consider tidal pools to be the most interesting of all the intertidal subhabitats because the pools show the high biodiversity. Formed by depressions in the reef that trap water at low tide, tide pools provide a habitat that frees organisms from one of the most stressful intertidal factors, drying out. Thus, tide pools may contain a more diverse and often different association of organisms than found on adjacent exposed surfaces.
Tide pools vary in depth and volume and therefore, consist of a continuum of subhabitats rather than a single habitat, depending on the particular situation of the individual pool.