This story aired in the April 21, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
If you’re looking for KALW Reporter Anna Casalme on a sunny day, there’s a good chance she’s already at the beach. And she’s noticing a growing number of people connecting with the ocean through the outdoor activity called tidepooling. Anna talked to two guides who lead queer tidepooling events in the Bay Area to figure out what makes exploring these places on our coasts important, particularly for queer folks. Because it turns out the ocean is a very queer place, literally and metaphorically.
Story Transcript
Sound of waves crashing onto shore
REPORTER: I’m bundled up on a cliff overlooking Carmet Beach in Bodega Bay, surrounded by almost twenty strangers.
JACLYN SCHNEIDER: This coast has been stewarded by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years, over 12,000 years. And so we will be leaving everything as we find it.
REPORTER: Our guide today is Jaclyn Schneider. She’s a marine ecologist and outdoor educator who’s been studying tide pool ecosystems for a decade. And she’s leading this event as part of Branching Out Adventures, a non-profit that celebrates queerness through outdoor events like this one.
SCHNEIDER: Like what are some things you want to see in this space, or in everyone's space here?
PARTICIPANT: Queer joy!
SCHNEIDER: Queer joy! Yes! That one always makes the list. This is queer joy. And cold. Queer cold joy.
REPORTER: I’m braving the cold, because I’m seeking that queer joy. I’ve been feeling stuck in the in-between lately, stuck in between careers, stuck in between being too queer and not queer enough. But I already feel better just being here.
SCHNEIDER: I have some tidepooling cards, so I'm gonna let everyone just kind of grab a random card and then that's gonna be your creature for the day.
REPORTER: Once we have our gear, Jaclyn leads our group down the cliff to get to the beach.
SCHNEIDER: We'll just go single file down. We will be going down this trail over here.
Sound of footsteps on sand
REPORTER: So, what is tidepooling? When it’s low tide, the ocean recedes, exposing rocks along our coasts, and the marine life that lives here in crevices and pools.
SCHNEIDER: It's probably one of the most accessible parts of our ocean.
REPORTER: You don’t need to know how to swim or have access to scuba diving equipment or a boat to experience these places.
Tidepooling also demands harmony with nature. Before our group showed up today, Jaclyn checked local tide charts to see when the tide was going down. We’re mindful of how the waves are changing and where we’re stepping.
We stop and stare into one of the pools. And with Jaclyn’s help, we discover a stunning rainbow of small and slow-moving sea creatures. Jaclyn says –– we can spend hours, even days, here and still not see everything.
SCHNEIDER: Like even if you go to the same place or the same beach every year or every month, you'll see something new or something different. 'Cause the tide pools are constantly changing.
REPORTER: So that’s tidepooling, but what is queer tidepooling? On the surface, it’s exactly what it sounds like –– people who identify as queer going out and exploring the tide pools together.
SCHNEIDER: Can I get like a “thumb-o-meter” on how well, safe, happy, fun we're having?
PARTICIPANT: All the fun!
REPORTER: But as Jaclyn points out to our group, the marine life of the intertidal are themselves very queer.
JACLYN SCHNEIDER: They're one of the few organisms that are male and female in the intertidal. Almost everything is both or neither or changes, which is great. That's another queer tidepooling fact!
REPORTER: You can’t go tidepooling without seeing a wide spectrum of sexual, reproductive, and gendered behavior, defying the binaries society often tells us are natural.
JORDAN GOROSTIZA: Okay, you're telling me that there are only two sexes in nature and yet I'm seeing species all around me that are contradicting that.
REPORTER: That’s Jordan Gorostiza. He’s another queer tidepooling guide who was mentored by Jaclyn. He also thinks a lot about queerness in the ocean.
He tells me, sea anemones can clone themselves. Many species of fish can change their sex. And a lot of intertidal creatures are hermaphroditic, meaning they have both male and female reproductive organs and can mate with any member of their species.
Just a handful of examples are barnacles, some sea stars, and the tidepooling crowd favorite, nudibranchs. These eye-catching sea slugs come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors.
GOROSTIZA: My friends and I, we joke around, we call them the drag queens of the sea. They're just, like, so flamboyant.
GOROSTIZA: They are truly the most insane colors that I've seen in nature.
REPORTER: The tide pools are home to dozens, sometimes hundreds, of different species. So in order to compete in this crowded environment, the creatures here have developed a diversity of sexual and reproductive strategies. That flexibility and fluidness is an asset!
And Jordan finds that deeply meaningful to share with other queer folks.
GOROSTIZA: There's room for every expression of queerness in the sea and within our own human communities.
REPORTER: Given the recent and growing political attacks on the rights of queer people, Jordan says it matters when we see examples of queerness in nature.
GOROSTIZA: It's just really an amazing revelation to know that that exists there when so much of the cultural voice, especially right now, is trying to convince us that queerness is not natural. When it's right in front of you, it's hard to deny.
REPORTER: Not only do the tide pools show us how queerness is natural, they also contain an abundance of metaphors that we can learn from. Like a metaphor for resilience.
The tide goes in and out daily, making this an extremely harsh environment. Creatures here have to survive in the in-between, being exposed to air and being underwater, waves and rocks crashing over them, and predators that can swim and fly.
GOROSTIZA: As hard as it is to live in the intertidal, it's also really hard for queer people to live in the world that we live in, in this human built world. So it's like, how does our queerness make us adaptable? How does our queerness help us thrive in such extreme environments?
REPORTER: I ask our guide Jaclyn what metaphors she’s seeing in the tide pools. We talk about the ways we’ve both had to navigate the in-between as queer women of color, the ways we’re somehow too much and not enough at the same time.
She tells me she sees in the tide pools a metaphor for authenticity. The organisms here…
SCHNEIDER: … they exist as themselves. No matter how weird or obscure or strange they might be, they just exist and are unbothered. They're moisturized and unbothered by the world around them. Yes, they have their stressors of the day, but for the most part, they're just living as they are. And I think that's really important. We can kind of take a note from that. Just be authentically you, and let the rest of the waves take the rest away.
Sound of waves crashing onto shore
SCHNEIDER: We found a nudibranch! We can go home!
REPORTER: After almost two hours out here, I understand the experience of queer tidepooling better now. It’s a lot of things. It’s connecting with the ocean and the intertidal creatures we share our coasts with. It’s seeing queerness as natural and feeling at home with fellow queer beings. It’s finding nature metaphors that reveal what we’re craving in our own lives.
And the effect of all of this brings me back to where we started: queer joy.
Sound of laughing
REPORTER: It starts to drizzle and Jaclyn gathers us on the beach for group reflections.
Sound of everyone saying thank you
REPORTER: As everyone says their goodbyes, I take one more look at the reef. The tide is rising, slowly submerging everything we saw with it.
The tide pools are a liminal space, not quite land, not quite sea. I see a metaphor for transitions, how they can seem overwhelming or painful but maybe they don’t have to be. I see queer bodies, human and non-human alike, simply being themselves in the in-between, and it’s actually enough. And for a brief moment, I catch a glimpse of what is possible.
Sound of waves crashing onto shore
