Nordic Joe's Seattle Snorkel Guide

Weather: 44 F, Mostly Cloudy, no rain

Water:  High tide, ebbing, Low 40s, 50′ vis.

Date / Time: 11:00am – 2:00pm – December 20th

Location:  Ballard, Golden Gardens Right-Rocks / Mermaid Forrest

Braced for the cold this time, I brought my wife’s gloves and swim socks to afford me some protection against the cooler winter surface water.  I also made sure to wear the longest undies I could find, and added my snorkel bob rash-guard for good measure.   Not the most bundled up guy in the sea, but for me it proved to be enough that I enjoyed a 2 hour swim with only minor discomfort (easily outweighed by the joy of swimming in the sound).

I was determined to revisit Mermaid Forest at Golden Gardens in the winter so that I could observe what seasonal changes might occur there.   For the newer readers, I’ll explain that Mermaid Forest is a line of Sargassum Muticum that edges  coast on the north side of golden gardens.  When we discovered it this summer, it was the best location to be found for snorkeling in Seattle, bar none.   The diversity of marine life there was simply astounding and it was all within a foot or two of a waiting camera.  Huge schools of sea perch, giant emperor stars, fat sun-stars, all kinds of crab, ling cod, rock fish, perch, eels (actually eel-like fish) – you name it. It was entirely like visiting a tropical reef where all the fish just had better fashion sense.

These Anemones cling to rock features and convert piles of rubble into living reefs.

The only issue that swim ever had was that on the hottest days, the dark sargassum would absorb the sunlight and actually heat the surrounding water to around 65 degrees, and this could cloud it up a bit as the plankton and algae bloomed in the warm and nutrient rich waters around the forest.  I had heard that in the winter, this effect is eliminated, so I was VERY eager to introduce this fantastic spot to another swimmer.

We struck out from the shore, pleased to see the vicious current we encountered last time was completely gone, and made our way through VERY clear and beautiful waters.   There seemed to be an uptick in star-fish and moon snails along the bottom, but there was little else to see.  As we paddled out, checked our progress against the shore and my own instructions for finding the forest again:

1.  Put in at the rightmost rocks at golden gardens.  Swim out directly toward the sea until you are getting nervous that you might be too far out (around 700 feet).  You should still be able to see the bottom.   If you can’t, you are too far out.

2. From there, proceed parallel to the shore and you will find the forest when you are parallel to the feature that we named “mermaid beach” – where long slabs of concrete from a jumble on the shore.  The forest stretches from this point, all the way past the feature called “green joe”.

Yet here I was, moving along the coast, almost to Green Joe, and there was nothing but water, sand, star fish, and a few dark spots on the sea floor below.

Had somebody removed the forest?  S Muticum is an invasive foreign species from Japan that competes with the local eel grass and kelp.   There had been talk of eradication…but last thing I had read suggested this was truly impossible.  Had some environmental disaster fallen upon the area?

My swim buddy proposed that the forest dies in the winter.  I doubted that as I’d read just how tough this stuff was to get rid of.

After an hour or so, we gave up on the clearly absent forest and headed in toward Green Joe.  The system of rocks around it functioned like a reef and there was always a bounty of life to bee seen there.  Yet as we neared, I spotted nothing but larger and larger star fish – apparent refugees from the missing seaweed forest.  Some crabs that I had only seen clinging to seaweed before were on some of the rocks.  What was most notably missing was the huge school of sea perch that used to shelter in the lee of the big rock itself as if on-break from the goings on in the relatively urban environment of the nearby seaweed forest.  I circled the area – looking for any sign of larger life – but the place was just abandoned.

We made our way back along the shore-break rocks and looked for gunnels in the rocks.  We spotted a few bold crabs, some penfish, a small school of perch that mocked the once grand display the area offered.   This place in winter was the same as on land – an animal can still be seen here and there, but it is primarily in hibernation.   This is an observation confirmed after some research when I got home.   I looked up more information on S Muticum and discovered this:

S. Muticum’s  Lateral branches detach in the summer or autumn, leaving a short perennialbasal stem to overwinter.

- Nobanis Invasive Alient Species Fact Sheet

So the forest will return in the spring -and it remains for now as a forest of deciduous trees in the winter – spare and barren.

Lesson:  Winter swims will require more stable ecosystems such as rock-reefs, ship-wrecks, or perhaps kelp forests.

This refugee from the missing forest is making due on a near-by rock.

I spotted a kelp forest right by the Seattle Aquarium – I might ask them for permission to explore the vicinity of their building!  Otherwise, I may have to suck up my pride and try a swim at Discovery Park.  It’s one of the few public beaches I haven’t ventured into yet.  There’s a reason, and I’ll share it in my first post on Discovery Park, coming soon this winter.

Jenny got off work early at 5:30 pm and so we took off, picked up with another rental suit for Jenny at ChekaLooka and into the water at Golden Gardens by 6:00.  There were the usual lookers-on and questions to answer for people before we put in:

“Yes, there’s amazing stuff to see out there.”

“Yes it’s cold, but not with a wet suit.”

And one new question:

“Yes, you need a wet suit.”

I forgot my hood but the water was extra warm today.  It felt like around 58 degrees at the shore, so I abandoned my boots and tried to go with naked head and feet.  My feet took it just fine, and that’s great news since my boots don’t really fit in my fins anyway.  I can probably skip boots for most of the summer if I am lucky.  Yet for me the hood was NOT optional.  I did a test swim of about 2 minutes and the ice-cream headache effect came back in full swing.  I ended up running down to ChekaLooka for rental.  On the way back, I noticed a lot of glass in the beach.  Be careful running barefoot at this spot as it seems to be the place where under age kids go to drink beer (or I’m just getting old) and there’s evidence of broken bottles in the sand near the right-rocks put-in.  Buy some cheap flip-flops to leave on the beach while you swim or comfortable dive shoes to wear on the beach and beneath your fins.

After rushing back with a hood, we put in and began our swim out.  Conditions were promising as it was hot, sunny, and the water was very calm but with a steady current at an extra high tide.  Yet two things dampened the quality of this run:

1. The late afternoon sun was at an angle that really seemed to reduce visibility by about 75%.  Conditions that I would expect 100′ visibility were producing something more like 25′ visibility.  Also, the fish were extra jumpy at this time of day, perhaps because it’s the feeding time for larger predators.  If we floated with the current, we could see all kinds of neat stuff, but every time they saw us move, they scattered.

LESSON: Don’t go too late or too early in the day when the sun’s angle will cause most of the light to be traveling horizontally, casing everything in glare or shadow and nothing in visible relief.   The fish are jumpy a these  times anyway, so it’s best to let them be. 6:00 is probably too late to put in at Golden Gardens.

2. I know that I have been advocating for going at high tide only, but this time, the tide was maybe TOO high.  I’d been in out in 9′ high tides at this location twice and had a great time with lots of stuff visible.  Although AyeTides on my iPhone told me this was just a 10.5 foot high tide, it was about 6 feet deeper on the coast than a reported 9.5 foot tide.   The rock we call “Green Joe” was completely submerged with two feet of water over it and the seaweed forest was quite distant from the surface as we swam over it.  Mermaid beach was totally submerged and I could barely stand at the most shallow location by  the sea-wall.  During other high tides it is an exposed sandy beach.  Given that there was a solar eclipse on the other side of the planet, this must have been a spring tide.  As a result, we lost some of our navigational bearings and went much farther up the coast than we usually do.  This also made the deep water stuff more boring in the reduced afternoon visibility.   Coming back, the life in the rocks along the sea wall was much more interesting.

Lesson: There’s such a thing as too much of a good thing.  When the tide is too high, and you are farther from the action in the seaweed forests off-shore.  Take it to the rocks along the shore during high tides and low visibility.  Inversely, I must test whether this means that at LOW tide, when the rocks are terrible and the in-shore swimming is so bad, if the views out 200 feet are significantly better.   It’s possible that the axiom I have been following of “never at low tide” is wrong and that I should be saying: Long beach? Extend your reach.  Distant locations such as Mermaid Forest might look best at low side when surface plunges your closer to the action – or maybe it will be a murky algae bloom.

Only one way to find out.