Vancouver Island's Magical Tide Pools Are Teeming With Stunning Marine Life — Here's What It's Like to Visit

I usually disapprove of footwear at the beach. But even I agreed to wear wellies as I walked through the tide pools at Sombrio Beach, where a thick bed of midnight-blue mussels and pointy goose barnacles was slicked with glossy green surfgrass. 

It was a sunny day in early May on a wild stretch of sand in the Juan de Fuca Provincial Park, on the southwestern coast of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia. The sky was so clear I could see the outline of Washington’s Mount Olympus some 60 miles away. The water was full of surfers in wet suits; colossal Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, and cedar trees lined the shore. 

Everything about this epic landscape tugged my attention upward, but my guide, Annalee Kanwisher of Coastal Bliss Adventures, encouraged me to focus my gaze down. “Wait for it,” she said excitedly. The tide was going out and a creamy layer of ocean-whipped foam was sucked back out to sea, leaving behind a glassy tide pool teeming with life. Ruby-red sea stars were plastered on the rocks, and hermit crabs scampered across driftwood. The purple tentacles of a sea anemone blossomed like petals of a dahlia, and a sluglike nudibranch with electric orange spots clung to a ribbon of kelp. 

Vancouver Island is a place where old-growth forests are named for holy spaces (like Cathedral Grove, in a park on the island’s eastern edge) and trees can have celebrity status (“Big Lonely Doug,” Canada’s second-tallest Douglas fir, is a main attraction). People travel there to be awed by the immensity of nature. But I wanted to see the smaller wonders hidden in the island’s intertidal zones. My 10-day journey resembled a high school field trip, but with cushy lodges and fantastic restaurants. I could walk the beaches on my own, but to truly appreciate the complexity of the tiny ecosystems, I’d need the help of an expert or two. So I enlisted First Nations members and guides, like Kanwisher, who could impart local wisdom and provide context to what I saw.

Victoria to Port Renfrew

On the surface, Victoria can feel staid. But the provincial capital, which was named in honor of the British queen, definitely has a wild side. From my home base, Magnolia Hotel & Spa, it was a short walk to the Inner Harbour, where Havn, a World War II barge turned floating sauna complex, recently opened. I popped in for restorative steam. Then, I took one of the hotel’s bikes for a spin along some of the city’s many paths, which trace the driftwood-strewn coast from downtown to the natural rock pools of Sooke Potholes Park. Still, in the larger scope of Vancouver Island’s wilderness, this was nature lite.

That afternoon, I hit the road, and the landscape turned rugged surprisingly quickly. Highway 14 curves past wave-battered cliffs and traverses some of the world’s most ancient forests. Two hours later I arrived in Port Renfrew. This small village has been dubbed the Tall Tree Capital of Canada, but it’s also home to some of the West Coast’s richest intertidal zones. 

My waterfront log cabin at Wild Renfrew was conveniently tucked between two popular coastal trailheads: the challenging West Coast Trail and the less intense, yet no less spectacular, Juan de Fuca Marine Trail. Kanwisher had agreed to guide me on a 9.5-mile portion of the latter, beginning at Sombrio Beach and finishing at Botanical Beach. 

Along the way, she gave me a quick lesson in marine anatomy, explaining how a sea star can push its stomach out of its mouth to engulf its prey, and that a goose barnacle has the largest penis-to-body-size ratio in the animal kingdom. It was peak low tide when we arrived at Botanical Beach, and the shore looked like a sandstone moonscape of turquoise tidal pools, each home to a symbiotic ecosystem. 

Up close, each of these pools resembled a bountiful garden of colorful brittle stars, spiny urchins, and blue-striped chiton — a species that, I learned, pre-dates the dinosaurs. When I recalled my tide-pooling discoveries to the bartender at Wild Mountain Food & Drink later that evening, she teased me for my eager interest. But, it turns out, my interest wasn’t so unusual: In the early 1900s, seashore ecology was in vogue. In his tome "Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology," the marine biologist and environmentalist Joel Hedgpeth declared: “A well-ordered holiday was incomplete without exercise in the identification of seaweeds and zoophytes.” I briefly wondered if I should launch a TikTok tide-pooling feed to resurrect the trend.

Port Renfrew to Parksville 

Two days later, I drove through the Cowichan Valley wine region to reach the island’s tamer eastern shore. My destination, Parksville, is a beachcomber’s paradise, especially when the tide is changing. The water receded more than a half-mile on the beach fronting my hotel, Tigh-Na-Mara Seaside Spa Resort, leaving behind a swath of sand littered with sea critters. 

I could have spent an entire afternoon soaking in the mineral pools at the resort’s Grotto Spa, but I willed myself to drive 30 minutes north to Deep Bay Marine Field Station. Vancouver Island University’s shellfish research facility, which is open to the public in the summer, offers guided tours of its two aquariums, intertidal-zone touch tanks, and labs where research ranges from aquaculture to microplastics. Field station manager Carl Butterworth pointed out clam and Pacific oyster larvae that are being bred to be more resilient to climate change. He then asked me to gently pick up a slimy sea cucumber. “Most people who grew up on this coast just look at the intertidal creatures,” he said. “They are too scared to touch and interact with them. They never take time to understand what they’re seeing on the beach.”

Parksville to Ucluelet

After exploring the east, I headed back to the island’s western side. In the village of Ucluelet (pronounced you-clue-let), I decided to explore the intertidal zones from a different perspective. 

I signed up for a kayak tour with Hello Nature Adventure Tours, a company that works closely with Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations members to develop its itineraries. The region’s famed ancient oaks cast long reflections on the inky water of Ucluelet Harbour; below the surface, however, was another plant — less celebrated, but no less ecologically significant. The island’s kelp forests are a foundational species, providing food and shelter for thousands of marine creatures, explained my guide, Sam Brunt. Closer to shore, the rocky tide line was plastered with pumpkin-hued sea stars. “These guys gobble up urchins,” she explained. “Without them, the kelp forest would be overrun.”

I had a kelp encounter of a different kind that night at Pluvio Restaurant & Rooms, a 24-seat restaurant that has made “Ukee,” as the town is locally known, an essential detour for food lovers. After multiple lessons in the local marine ecology, this was a master class in the island’s edible wild ingredients, and the experience felt like a Canadian version of Chez Panisse. Chef Warren Barr thinks outside the box to use what’s at his doorstep, rather than importing ingredients. Kelp gnocchi with poached Lois Lake steelhead and trout caviar was one of the nearly dozen dishes on the tasting menu. Fermented green blueberries replaced capers. And his riff on the lobster roll, the “humdog,” featured Humboldt squid dressed with fermented turnips, shrimp, and chili aioli, all tucked into a milk bun. 

After such a rich meal, I was relieved that the Nami Project, a collection of self-catering cabins and suites with a wabi-sabi aesthetic, was just up the road. The Wild Pacific Trail started steps from my door, making it easy to hike off my indulgences the next morning amid misty Sitka spruce, western hemlock, and giant 800-year-old red cedars.

Ucluelet to Bamfield

On the edge of Barkley Sound, within the traditional territory of the Huu-ay-aht First Nations, Bamfield isn’t the easiest place to reach. From Ucluelet I drove 90 minutes inland to Port Alberni. I could have continued on to Bamfield via a recently upgraded gravel road, but instead I stopped for the night at Swept Away Inn, a quirky B&B housed in a renovated 1940s tugboat. The inn is steps from the dock for the Frances Barkley, a ferry that sails along Alberni Inlet. I boarded at 8 a.m., and the 4.5-hour ride to Bamfield doubled as a nature tour, with sightings of eagles and otters. 

The town may well be the brainiest beach community on the planet: Most of its 205 year-round residents are scientists and researchers studying at the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre. Two former teachers at the center, Russell Markel and Scott Wallace, recently returned to open Outer Shores Lodge, a retreat with a five-room lodge and two cabins that is devoted to wilderness exploration and education. 

Markel and Wallace, who consider themselves caretakers rather than owners, were inspired by two coastal-ecology pioneers from the mid-20th century. One of them was Robert Bruce Scott, who launched the first ecotourism resort on Canada’s Pacific coast in the 1940s, on the site of what would become Outer Shores. The second, Ed Ricketts — who was John Steinbeck’s companion on a voyage through the Sea of Cortés, which became the basis for Steinbeck’s book of the same name — spent decades detailing the species of the Pacific Northwest. Ricketts and Steinbeck’s research was rooted in food, fun, and free-flowing alcohol. Markel and Wallace embrace a similar philosophy at Outer Shores, a place that felt almost like an adult summer camp. By day, guests split up for Zodiac tours or interpretive walks led by a food-web ecologist or a seaweed-and-scotch connoisseur. At night we gathered for communal meals of seared scallops and salmon burgers. Local wines from producers like Averill Creek Vineyard fueled lively dinner conversations. 

One day, we visited Kiixin, the capital of the Huu-ay-aht and the only traditional First Nations village remaining on British Columbia’s southwestern coast. Our guide, Stella Peters, led us through primordial forest to the sprawling beach where her people lived for more than 5,500 years. I stepped into an outline of shells on the spongy forest floor. “Welcome to my family’s home,” she said. I looked up, and my eyes saw only fern- and moss-covered cedars, but then Peters pointed out a human-made archway, hidden by vines, that was once part of the house where 13 generations of her family lived. 

Another day, Wallace and I walked from the lodge to Brady’s Beach, about a mile away. “Feather boa kelp, Turkish towel kelp, bull kelp,” he said, checking off species as we combed the shore. When we came to an abandoned game of hangman etched into the sand, he shouted, “Hedophyllum sessile,” correctly guessing the mystery word: the scientific name for a species of algae. I laughed out loud and thought, Only on Vancouver Island.  

A version of this story first appeared in the February 2024 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline "Treasures of the Tide."