California Tidepools

it's low tide at paradise moving malibu clusters of people stoop over to touch starfish soft reading enemies and spiky purple urchins that have become exposed to the misty white year old woman and her four year old granddaughter are collecting shells in a plastic bag yet at nearby ucla ecologist rich ambrose watts by a red starfish that jumped over a muscle ambrose says even though a muscle is very difficult to pull apart the starfish also called a sea star is only eating with stardust at the poles on that you have all these to be back and hold on the muscles just radley tries to pull apart and the sea star actually has a stomach that if the partygoers outside of its body and so it can fit through this little tiny sled and digest the muscle ambrose says a bigger threat to the muscles that are hungry starving people walking on the political landscape for these mussels they have

really really strong threats that attach them to the rocks at each other and so it's a unique format that really resists force of waves coming in but if you open up a patch of them it all funnels almost all day that this is a weakness to the vet and rose says people are collecting or stepping on just about every kind of animal in and around titles he points to a fluid deep purple sea slug it's a dramatic day camel long pointy has to taint this is an animal that is really heavily impacted by visitors because it's very soft wanting people don't even see them and you can step on them and they just push people are also taking starfish almost seventy years and they're illegally snagging ram sixteen teams seeking numbers and other animals for their own dinner tables to sell to restaurants and aquariums and roses researchers found that about six percent of visitors alike something

and title areas get a lot of visitors thirty to fifty thousand a year at a single site if a major problem marketing major reno overseas game wardens for the california department of fishing again the inner title where are you of course you didn't go home and we have a large number of human trying to use the same area there are places in southern california where it is legal to collect animals from tide pool areas if you have a permit but people are taking them in places where it's prohibited state parks post signs but they're not always easy to spot the parks and the department of fishing game have patrols during a low tide but they're understaffed and says ecologist rich ambrose some people when i mean i'm very interested in hearing big tractor very uncommon here at one point we saw somebody drive down a pickup truck just filling up about what's more all the collecting and trampling probably

makes title areas more vulnerable to other problems such as urban runoff with so many reasons for concern ambrose says people need to change their attitudes about the ocean our society views the ocean completely different set of parameters about what is acceptable and what isn't acceptable compared to lay oceans assert has this tradition of being free relatively limited restrictions or as a landlord very used to the idea that people on land and they control what happens in life not far from ambrose common murphy of brentwood points out a cluster of orange purple and red sea stars it's not every day you see so many starfish and if we're not careful there may be fewer and fewer of them for us to enjoy in malibu hills to set sail at nine point three kpcc