How I Touched Extinction

On a beach I travelled 2 million years through time and wonder.

A sampling from the beach.

ALONE ON A TWO-MILE SHOAL off the North Carolina coast, I did not expect to encounter extinction. My aspirations that morning were far less profound: walking, thinking, writing and learning to identify a few seashells along the beach.

But oceans are nothing less than seas of opportunity. Covering 70 percent of the earth’s surface, they conceal incomprehensible biological diversity that few of us will ever explore.

And yet the more I walked, stopping like a plover to pick at cockles and whelks, surfclams and sand dollars, the more it became clear to me that along the beach I could explore the sea beyond. That’s because twice a day the tides cast ashore the ocean’s winsome remains — some of the most ornate and precious manifestations of calcium and carbon on the planet. 

It was there among the tide zone’s disarray and beauty that I touched extinction.