No, not something out of a horror movie, but a great time to go tidepooling. A negative tide is where the tide actually goes lower than the average water line. What this means is that areas that are normally way under water are open for people to see.
Recently (Feb 8th, 2009) there was a wonderful negative tide at Half Moon Bay which is about an hours drive from here. The forecast was for showers/rain, but we thought we would try and go see it as the negative tide rarely occurs on a weekend. On the drive over, the rains came down quite heavily. We thought that perhaps the journey was in vain, but much to our suprise, the weather at Half Moon Bay was great. The rain stayed away until much later that evening, so we had a wonderful time looking around the tidepools.
The land behind Arran and Iona is usually covered in a few feet of that wet stuff.
Mussel beds were plentiful (as were people harvesting them for dinner that night!). Tons of anemones were on the rocks, covered in seashells to keep themselves from getting sunburnt. We saw plenty of starfish in a rainbow of colours, including one which was using its suckers to pry open a mussel for lunch. Starfish pull the mussels apart a bit, then stick their stomach in the mussel and digest it. Yum!
Then a walk back down the beach to where we parked the car.
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