Let's Explore the Beach!: A Young Naturalist's Guide to Pacific Coastal Wildlife

by Karen DeWitz

Overview

Let’s Explore the Beach is a fun and engaging resource for young adventurers and families who explore the shores along the West Coast.

Going to the beach for the day and want to do some exploring? Want to know how sea stars eat? Curious about the lives of hermit crabs, sea lions, or pelicans?

This grab-and-go field resource focuses on the amazing creatures and plants along the Pacific Coast. Filled with color photos and fascinating facts, the book is divided into three sections: tide pools, shoreline, and shorebirds. Each section offers details on a range of wildlife and other coastal treasures.

Readers will be amazed at the fascinating life and bizarre phenomena they may have been missing along the shore. Clone wars, poisonous algae blooms, and glow-in-the dark spectacles are all happening right here along the Pacific Coast. Even the quietest beaches and rocky shorelines have secrets to discover if you know where and how to look.

This beautiful and informative guidebook is perfect for aspiring young (or young at heart) naturalists and families who love to explore coastal beaches.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632174420
Publisher:	Blue Star Press
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	1,077,684
Product dimensions:	6.03(w) x 7.98(h) x 0.62(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

KAREN DeWITZ is an unapologetically enthusiastic nature nerd. She loves nothing better than to grab her camera and head outside to explore, delighting in the sometimes well-hidden discoveries to be made along the way. Karen has a rich background in instruction, outdoor education, and photography. As a former teacher with a master's degree in education, she understands how to intrigue and inspire young people. She has experience both in the classroom and in Northwest wild places—teaching, writing, exploring, and marveling in the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

Read an Excerpt

Welcome to the Pacific Coast!
 
There is so much to discover here if you know where to look. The Pacific coastline is home to tens of thousands of different species of marine plants and animals. Some of these creatures have been around since before the dinosaurs. There are signs of life everywhere, and learning about them makes the beach a new adventure every time you go.
 
How to Use This Book
 
This guide is written to help young naturalists— and anyone else curious about the amazing wildlife along the Pacific coast— know what to look for while wandering the shore. Does it cover everything you might come across? Wonderfully, no! (But it definitely covers a lot.) You’ll start to see new things you’ve never noticed before once you really start looking. What a great reason to keep going back to the beach!
 
The book is divided into three parts: tide pools, shoreline, and shorebirds. There’s lots of overlap in the real world, but in this book each section highlights a different collection of Pacific coastal life and other cool treasures. You will learn about a variety of animals, seaweed, and interesting nonliving finds along the Pacific coast. For each living entry, there are six types of information:
 
NAME: What is it called?
APPEARANCE: What does it look like?
FOOD: What does it eat, and/or what eats it?
HABITAT: What kind of environment does it like?
REPRODUCTION: Does it have babies, lay or release eggs, or just clone itself?
RANGE: Where does it live?
 
There will also be hints to help you find and appreciate treasures like agates, shells, and fossils as you wander the shore.
 
The Ocean
 
To get the most out of a trip to the coast, start by thinking about its big-gest giant: the Pacific Ocean— a single body of water that covers almost a third of the earth’s surface. The Pacific is bigger than all of the land of all the continents on Earth put together. It has deep places that humans haven’t explored and life forms people have never seen. A trip to the Pacific coast puts you on the edge of that huge, unknown mystery. The wind, waves, and wildlife are constantly changing. No matter how many times you go back to the same beach, you may find something new with each visit.