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Botanical Beach dazzles with marine jewels

Imagine a treasure chest that makes Tiffany or Cartier look like also rans. One of the world’s premier jewel boxes is on open display at Juan de Fuca Park’s Botanical Beach, a two-hour drive northwest of downtown Victoria.
1536travel
Photography by Louise Christie

Imagine a treasure chest that makes Tiffany or Cartier look like also rans. One of the world’s premier jewel boxes is on open display at Juan de Fuca Park’s Botanical Beach, a two-hour drive northwest of downtown Victoria. But there’s a catch: viewing hours vary with the tides. In the beach’s case, the lower the better. Only then can you venture into the heart of the vault.

Sandstone and basalt shelves skirt out from thickly-forested ridges. High above the gravelled beach’s foreshore, every inch of soil erupts with life. Greenery dominates the skyline and overflows from ridges onto sheer, bare walls of shale and quartz, a conglomerate of the West Coast’s geological history built up over the past 100 million years or so.

Life is displayed on a dazzling scale. All this before even stepping out onto flat runways grassy with green growth and stippled in places with hummocks of black granite. If you timed it right, you’ll be staring bug-eyed into jewel boxes carved into the shelves by the spinning of rocks loosened within the sandstone and rounded by the swirling motion of the tides. Colonies of Blue and California mussel shells appear to have been stuffed into the pockmarked rock face like snails in escargot shells. Starbursts of purple sea urchins and wreathes of giant green anemones necklace the sides of the tide pools.

Pull out a guide to seashore marine life from your pack and do some sleuthing into the more delicate, though no less resplendent creatures, such as chitons, whose backs are plated like tortoise shells and whose undersides are as nacrescent as mother-of-pearl.

Whatever you do, look but don’t touch. Pretend the surface of the clear seawater is glass plating on these extraordinary showcases. That will make Don McLaren, area supervisor with B.C. Parks’ Goldstream and Juan de Fuca district, a happy man indeed. McLaren spoke with Pique about the challenges of managing Botanical Beach, which became a protected area in 1985 but which has been an area of keen scientific study since the early 1900s.

“There are other tide pools on the coast,” he said, “but because of its easy accessibility, Botanical Beach has become a world-renowned focus point. We’ve heard comments regarding resources disappearing but the studies are inconclusive on missing specimens. Any changes may be the result of species migration or die off.”

McLaren mentioned a recent discussion he had with a University of Washington professor who offered her professional opinion that not much or any change has occurred during her long-term study of the beach environment. “The area is naturally protected by the elements. Over the winter, plankton and organisms return to places where people have worn trails and the beach repairs itself. However, what people consider low impact is not always so,” he cautioned. “There are three things visitors should know: turning over rocks disturbs habitat; sea shells, such as dogwinkles and whelks, need to stay where they are as shelter for hermit crabs; and plunging your hands into the tide pools, especially if you’re wearing sun screen, may contaminate them with oils.”

The best way to prepare for a visit to Botanical Beach is to bring rain gear or at least windproof clothing and waterproof footwear. Young children may have difficulty reaching some of the beach’s more rugged places, such as a point dubbed the Amphitheatre. No matter what age, few of us are unaffected by the allure of jewelry. A visit to Botanical Beach will most certainly confirm that.

Access: Port Renfrew lies 118 kilometres west of downtown Victoria via Sooke at the north end of Highway 14 from where B.C. Parks signs point the way to the day parking lot at Botanical Beach, a further 3 kilometres west. From there, an old logging road scraped from the bedrock and overhung by salal and alder leads walkers in a wide loop for 2.5 kilometres. Bear left at the trail’s first divide for the shortest approach to the beach. A longer, more rugged, and arguably more picturesque route via Botany Bay leads 1.5 kilometres to the right. For more information on Juan de Fuca Park, visit http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks .

For a detailed description of the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail, consult Hiking the West Coast of Vancouver Island (Tim Leadem, Greystone Books, $22.95). To make the most of your visit, pack along The Beachcomber’s Guide to Seashore Life in the Pacific Northwest (J. Duane Sept, Harbour Publishing, $24.95) or Seashore of British Columbia (Ian Sheldon, Lone Pine, $18.95).

Monthly tide charts are posted at www.waterlevels.gc.ca; link to “Port Renfrew” under the site’s index. Until clocks change in October, add an hour to the listed times to correct for Daylight Savings. A low tide of 1.2 metres or less is best for viewing tidal pools.

Although camping is not permitted at Botanical Beach, if you’re intent on overnighting in the region there are several options in Juan de Fuca Park as well as nearby in the small fishing village of Port Renfrew.

Those interested in backpacking a section of the 47-kilometre Juan de Fuca Marine Trail, as muddy and rugged in places as the better-know West Coast Trail whose southern terminus lies in Port Renfrew, would do well to hike 6 kilometres south from Botanical Beach to the pleasant Payzant Creek campground. For a list of accommodations in Port Renfrew and the Sooke region, visit hellobc.com. <

Jack Christie is the author of The Whistler Book (Greystone Books). Visit him at jackchristie.com.