2022 Winter Solstice Sea Star Search Tidpooling at Pillar Point (Half Moon Bay)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Join us for some evening tidepooling and search for sea stars as part of the Solstice Sea Star Search!

The California Academy of Sciences, together with The Nature Conservancy, is launching a community science campaign from December 20th-23rd to get people out to the coast looking for sea stars! We are hoping to find the sunflower star, Pycnopodia helioanthoides, which is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN red list and almost extirpated from California. We are also super interested in gathering information on the distribution of other sea star species that we haven’t seen much since sea star wasting, especially species other species like Piaster brevispinnus and Pisaster giganteus.

We are calling it the Solstice Sea Star Search!

We will be out at Pillar Point on Thursday, December 22nd!

Meet us in the parking lot at 3pm!

Low tide is -1.5 ft. at 4pm. Sunset is at 5pm, dark at 6pm.

Some important details:

Be sure to bring a phone with the iNaturalist app installed and an account made, or a camera to upload your observations to the iNaturalist website later.

As always, shoes with good tread that can get wet are a must. You should also bring a flashlight or headlamp to explore the reef after sunset and/or for the walk back to your car.

Pillar Point is a popular place, and super low tides often attract a crowd. We recommend coming early to give yourself plenty of time to find parking & walk to the reef. Here’s a map that shows the three main places to look for parking, and the shortest way to walk to the reef from them.

If you’re in the main parking lot by 3:00pm, we’ll gather up near the bathrooms and walk out to the tidepools together. If you get there late, just head on out to the reef whenever you arrive!

Because we’ll be outside, masks aren’t required, but definitely feel free to bring one and wear one if you’d like, especially for times where you might be gathered with others.

We’d like to cover as much of the reef as possible and make observations on iNaturalist, so you’re welcome to explore whatever areas interest you the most. All your observations will automatically get added to our Pillar Point Biodiversity project. If you’re looking for others in our group, you’re always likely to find folks at the nudibranch pool on the western edge of the reef (marked on the parking map linked above!)

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.