Botanical Beach

Botanical Beach
John Harvey Photo

On the West coast of Vancouver Island, near Port Renfrew
Botanical beach is about two hours north of Victoria on a twisting, winding road, with no gas stations for at least 180 km. The low tide I was chasing (a 1.2 foot) turned at 8:45 am, so it was a 6 am start.

In The Tide Pools:
Tide pools are like little windows into another world. The rock at Botanical Beach has a variety of pools carved into - from 1 litre to the size of swimming pools. Each little pool is a microcausem of life - sea anemones filtering out bits of food, snails scraping algae of the walls and sea weeds fighting for light. Sea anemones are one of my favorite because there is nothing like them that grow on land.

Click on a photo for a larger version.