When a friend told me she saw fifty ochre stars at Rockview, I envisioned a matrix of colorful sea stars, arms spread wide, glinting merrily from the face of the 15-foot tall rock face. It would be like looking at a movie screen, or shopping in the sock department at Target, except I would be viewing sea stars instead of choosing socks.

It wasn’t like that at all. The rock face is very irregular, and the stars had stuffed themselves into crevices, under overhangs, below the waterline, and amid other sea creatures. They were bent and folded, squashed and tangled, in clumps or alone, camouflaged against the variegated background. To find them, I had to peer closely at the rock face, often stooping, while the water level varied with wave action from none to knee high, which meant the bottoms of my pant legs were soaked. I couldn’t actually go as far out as I would have liked since that was the highest soaking I was willing to accept, having come straight from work.

To recap, I had to arrange to arrive before the minus tide, dress (almost) appropriately, spend an hour sloshing about, and still find only part of what I sought, which wasn’t exactly what I sought, since most of the “stars” looked sort of like these, though this picture was taken with zoom and flash:

Not much like shopping. But maybe shopping should be more like tide pooling.

Imagine going to the store and not having any idea where your item might be. There are stores like that, and we modern folk hate them. But I’m picturing something beyond disorganization, sans sales assistants. Say you are looking for socks, and you have only a rough idea of where you have seen socks before, but they aren’t always there, and you have to search in rough terrain for them, and even if you find some they might not be matched, or the right size, or in good shape, or perhaps there aren’t enough of them for your family.

Sounds crazy, right? But that’s how most animals find what they need, including human animals for 90% of our existence.

A slightly related fun fact: In the dolphin pool at the research lab associated with the aquarium where I volunteer, the dolphins are fed between two and eight meals daily, at varying times, so that their experience of eating more closely resembles that of their wild cousins. It’s one of the techniques used to stimulate the animals: managing change leads to cognitive growth.