September is solidly beach season around the bay. While the likes of Stinson, Rodeo and Muir dominate seaside itineraries in Marin, a broader variety of beaches offer rare chances to explore the marine environment.
“It’s good to look at the map and say, ‘Which beach haven’t I been to?’ or ‘Which one do I need for this kind of mood?’ or ‘Which one is good to share with someone else?’ We are so lucky in Marin because we have such a huge palette of choices,” says Mia Monroe, retired park ranger and community scientist. One such choice, defined by its geology with one of the largest shale reefs in North America, is Bolinas’ Agate Beach.
Here, in the intertidal zone of Duxbury Reef, marine life briefly comes into view at low tides. Within the shale reef’s tide pools are worlds of wonder: aggregating anemones that take on a green hue from mutualistic algae growing in their tissues or sea stars with hydraulic vascular systems to aid in movement and feeding. For most, a visit to the reef is a fleeting window into the marine world, but for Kent Khtikian it is a second home. Khtikian has been observing the reef since 1976 and has been a resident of Bolinas for nearly 40 years.
Khtikian’s observation of the reef centers around not only its natural history, but also the dramatic increase in human visitors to Agate Beach over the past decade, which has motivated the creation of conservation and education efforts. To protect the reef’s health and function for both wildlife and human benefit, Khtikian and his collaborators at the West Marin Environmental Action Committee (EAC) have created a docent program, which shows visitors how to enjoy the reef while minimizing negative impacts. “What’s so exciting about Duxbury is that not only are the docents protecting it but they are also sharing it,” says Monroe. “Duxbury Reef has inspired generations of Marinites to appreciate the environment.”
The EAC’s docent program offers groups visiting Duxbury Reef insights into the biology of tide pool organisms, building new perspectives. Where many visitors might set out to see one of the more charismatic tide pool residents such as a sea star or octopus, the docent program reveals the complexity and ingenuity of even the most mundane members of the tide pools, such as a barnacle. “Each creature really does have an intelligence, a logic, that is absolutely perfect for the niche that it is in,” Khtikian says.
Today, visitors to Duxbury Reef can do three basic things to reduce their negative impacts on the vulnerable environment as they explore it, says Khtikian: “Look with one’s eyes, not with one’s hands; don’t step in pools of water, no matter how small; and, when walking through the field of macroalgae covering a reef you always have a choice to step on a more- or less-covered piece of rock — always choose the less covered piece.”
While this guidance can be communicated as such, being on the reef with the docent program helps visitors appreciate tide pool ecology and internalize how these practices make a difference. Nudibranchs, or sea slugs, in Khtikian’s words “sometimes called butterflies of the sea, have an absolutely mind-numbing variety in coloration.” A tide pool as small as 4 to 5 inches in diameter may be a suitable refuge. Thus, visitors can immediately understand why avoiding stepping in even the smallest pools matters for protecting the reef’s stunning biodiversity.
For Khtikian, just seeing visitors walk differently on the reef with deeper knowledge of the natural world is a reflection of a changed relationship with the place, one that can have cascading effects even beyond Duxbury Reef. “People are getting the importance of conserving all this; armed with that information, we change how we behave and how we all interact with the reef, and as a consequence, with the entire environment.”
More information on the Duxbury Reef Docent Program, visiting the reef and signing up a group for a docent tour can be found at www.eacmarin.org/visiting-the-reef.
