NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:The ins and outs of ebbs and flows

This story is about tides and hard work. Every two weeks, I get a new batch of kids going through orientation at the Orange County Conservation Corps. I work with them in the field and teach them about habitats, conservation and endangered species.

After they leave my orientation crew, they go on to regular work crews at the corps, where their jobs range from recycling cans and bottles to tackling habitat restoration in county and city parks. One crew comes to Bartlett Park behind Newland Center several times a year to help clear out homeless encampments. Another crew is stationed at Bolsa Chica, where they assist the Bolsa Chica Conservancy with education and restoration.

Corps members range in age from 17 to 26. They’re mostly Latino and mostly male. They come to the corps to earn money while they finish their high school diplomas. Many are dealing with issues of probation, drug or alcohol addiction and/or gang membership. But these kids are motivated to turn their lives around. The thrill for me is seeing their transformation.

While these young people are with the corps, they learn the value of such basic job skills as reliability, punctuality, neatness and politeness. Attending the cap-and-gown graduation ceremony at the corps is always an emotional experience, because each graduate gives a short speech about his or her life. You wouldn’t believe the various obstacles they overcome to get their diplomas.

I’m as proud of these kids and their achievements as I am of my own family. They touch my heart in ways that are hard to explain. I never fail to learn something from them or see a new way of looking at the world.

Last week’s class is a case in point. We were at Bolsa Chica last Thursday, a day of particularly high and low tides. I showed the kids high tide at the Warner Avenue bridge before we tackled removal of non-native Myoporum trees in the wetlands. After lunch, we went back to Warner to see how Bolsa Bay looked at low tide. The change was dramatic.

One of the young men asked in amazement where the water had gone. I told him, “Back to the ocean.” But then I realized that he wasn’t really asking about that. He wanted to know why the water moved. No one had picked up the wetlands to empty it like a dishpan. No one had pulled the plug to drain it like a bathtub. But something was moving that water with a pretty swift current out of the wetlands.

Those of us who see the tide come and go nearly every day don’t think much about it. But these kids have been raised in Santa Ana, Garden Grove or Anaheim for the most part. Most of them haven’t been to the beach since they were little kids, if at all. Seeing high tide fill the Bolsa Chica from bank to bank followed by a low tide that exposes acres of mudflats is a pretty dramatic sight for them.

I tried to explain about the moon’s gravity tugging on the ocean, but I did a pretty poor job of it. I wished Vic had been there, because he gives a much better explanation of the gravitational forces that move the tides. And with that lengthy introduction, I’ll turn the column over to Vic.

The Pacific Ocean is indeed like a giant bathtub with no drain. And just like the water in a bathtub, the water in the ocean can, and does, slosh from side to side. The gravitational force of the sun and the moon actually pull the water upward on whichever side of the ocean is toward those heavenly bodies. When pulled upward, the tide is high. As the Earth rotates, the water sloshes back to the other side of the ocean, and the tide goes out on our side.

Movements of the sun and the moon are complex but predictable, so scientists can predict the sloshing quite accurately. When the sun and moon are together on the same side of Earth at the new moon, the pull is especially powerful and we get the most extreme tides: the highest highs and the lowest lows. The situation is similar at the full moon. At the quarter and three-quarter moons, the tides level out with less difference between high and low tides. In general, the tides change every six hours and 13 minutes, either filling Bolsa Bay or emptying it. Back to you, Lou.

Last week’s orientation crew was a particularly hard-working group. Corps members Alicia Beroud, Dennis Garcia, Jose Ortiz, Ernesto Parraguirre, Anthony Perez, Jose Ramirez, Alicia Thomas, Mike Velazquez and Trinton Wyatt exhibited hearts of lions as they cut and dragged Myoporum out of boot-sucking mud. Then they planted some native coyote brush.

We’ve nearly finished our work this season on the dunes south of the south parking lot. This project was funded in part by a grant to the corps from the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project, in cooperation with the Bolsa Chica Conservancy and the Amigos de Bolsa Chica.

Over the summer, the conservancy will continue the work of removing iceplant from the dunes, with help from the public. My corps orientation crews will work mainly at Crystal Cove State Park this summer, coming to Bolsa Chica occasionally to water the new plantings. I can hardly wait to see what I learn from my next crew, and the next, and the next.