Devil’s Punchbowl, Oregon, | 44.7469° N, 124.0635° W | September 12th, 2025
Driving up the Oregon Coast Highway (just north of Newport) shortly after 9pm, I am struck by the impenetrable darkness. The high beams on my little rental car struggle to cut through the misty, overcast night. With no street lights and very few other cars on the road, a familiar sensation envelopes me (one I’ve felt before while visiting this part of Oregon) I’m on the edge of the earth.
Ten minutes later, I pull into a small parking lot for Devil’s Punchbowl State Natural Area. The remote location and the obscurity of the night would feel disconcerting if I was alone — but I’m meeting a new friend here, Connie Sullivan (they/them). As a Program Coordinator for Oregon Sea Grant, Connie runs education programs, outreach, and technical assistance for the local fishing and boating community. It’s a solid job, and they are good at it. But Connie is also the founder of Salty Science — and that’s why we have come to this remote corner of the Oregon coast tonight.
After donning puffy coats and headlamps, Connie and I walk to a rickety wooden staircase leading to the beach. As we make our way down the steps, we chat about the dramatic tides of the Pacific Northwest.
“Where I grew up, in southeastern North Carolina, the tides were simple,” I tell Connie. “At low tide, you could see the marsh mud. At high tide, a few feet of water covered it.”
Connie laughs and then pulls out their phone and shows me a visual depiction of Oregon tides. It’s a graphic from the Salty Science PNW Instagram account, which Connie started back in 2020. I read the caption in their post from February 2023:
What you want to look for are “minus tides,” or a tide that goes out below the zero line. This line is different in all areas, but the indication of a minus tide means the same thing everywhere: go check out the intertidal!
For looking up tide levels, Connie uses an app called Tides, but notes that several different apps and websites are reliable.
“Most surfing apps are pretty accurate,” they say. “I think people should use whatever feels easy to interpret. I like to see the arc – the actual tidal cycle — because that’s how I learned it.
When Connie first learned about tides in undergrad, they realized this particular natural phenomenon is straightforward in a way many ocean forces are not.
How we study and track different elements of the ocean — from wind and hurricanes to temperature and salinity — has evolved over the decades. But no matter how much things change on our volatile planet, the movements of the earth, moon, and sun remain predictable — and so do the tides.
Tide height is usually measured from the low-water mark, which is considered the zero point. This procedure is simple in areas where the tide is relatively constant. However, in areas where tides are continually changing, scientists use an average (mean) of the low tide levels. This average is called the mean lower low-water level (MLLW). All tide heights at a location are measured from the zero point. When the low-water level is lower than the zero point, tide height is measured with a negative number and is called a minus tide. — Exploring our Fluid Earth
On the beach, Connie shoves their phone into a pocket and stares out towards the waves — small, choppy breakers about 100 yards away — we can hear them better than we see them.
The tides may be predictable, but Pacific ocean is still a formidable, erratic force — especially at night.
“I don’t trust the Oregon coast,” Connie says. “You always have to be on the lookout for sneaker waves — but we’ll hear it coming.”
We make our way down the beach, the beams of our headlamps bouncing off the wet sand. A crab skitters across our path, then pauses, holding perfectly still. I don’t know if the creature is blinded by our headlamps or just curious – or perhaps it doesn’t register our presence at all. But I take advantage of its motionlessness and snap a few photos.
In the spotlight: This purple shore crab (Hemigrapsusnudus) is commonly found in Oregon's intertidal zones.
Leaving the crab behind, Connie and I continue through the darkness, plodding through soft, wet sand, until we come upon a cluster of large rocks covered in seaweed. Up close, we can see it is literally teeming with life – everything is moving.
A hermit crab clambers over some dense seaweed and Connie points out the barnacles on its back. “These things are like little roving ecosystems themselves.”
Connie is a wealth of information, explaining how to tell the sex of crabs, how the seaweed is anchored into the rocks below the sand, how the Oregon sea star population population started experiencing massive die-offs in 2014 (from a phenomenon known as sea star wasting disease) but is now making an incredible recovery.
I try to absorb all this new knowledge, taking mental notes as I snap photos. I feel lucky to know a person as erudite and passionate as Connie Sullivan.
When I ask about the origin of Salty Science, their response is immediate.
“It has been an idea in my mind for a long time.”
Connie proceeds to describe what their life was like in 2020 —homeless, unemployed, bouncing around and crashing with different friends. One night, they were sitting on the kitchen floor at a friend’s house, feeling exhausted and depressed after filling out dozens of job applications. Full of concern, Connie’s friends made dinner and encouraged them to eat something. Then one of the friends posed this question:
“What if you created your own thing? If you could start your own business, what would you do?”
Connie immediately told them about the ideas that had been percolating in their mind — hands-on science lessons through tide pooling. Utilizing a ready-made outdoor classroom.
“After I told them my idea, my friends got quiet and then said, ‘you should do it! Figure it out!’”
So Connie started voicing the idea more, to other friends and family. The response from everyone was the same: make it happen.
Shortly after that, Connie landed a “real job”, but they didn’t put Salty Science on the back burner. Connie started taking a few kids (children of friends) to explore tide pools.
“The very first time I brought kids out here, I had this whole lesson plan – but it all went out the window,” Connie recalls with a laugh. “The kids just wanted to look at stuff. So now my approach is we’ll just see what we see…”
Connie tells me a little bit about their experiences in college and grad school, specifically the impact of participating in the Three Seas Program at Northeastern University. This immersive, field-intensive marine biology program ingrained in Connie a fundamental desire to know a place inside and out, to attempt to understand environments at every level.
“I don’t think I would be a field scientist without that program,” Connie says. “It ruined me forever for working a desk job.”
But that experience continues to fuel Connie’s drive to share meaningful lessons with young people in wild places.
“I have always loved working with kids and I love place-based learning,” Connie says. “I have so much respect for teachers who work in traditional classrooms, but I couldn’t do it. I need nature to inspire my teaching.”
A classroom without walls is a mantra that has stayed with Connie for many years.
“It helps me be wildly present,” Connie says. “Fully here in this moment, as well as feral. I stop thinking about a lot of other things when I do any field work – but especially the inner tidal.
Connie explains that part of this super-charged sense of the present moment is a simple matter of safety. Sneaker waves are a very real threat when exploring the Oregon coast.
“The environment forces you to pay attention. If you’re not present, you could have a serious problem.”
But it’s also about the fundamental joy of new discoveries — peering into the beady eyes of a crab or marveling at the tenacity of sea stars. Connie refers to these moments as ocean reverence.
“It’s tough right now — seeing how much science is being challenged at the political level,” Connie says. “Some days I wonder what I’m working so hard for because it may just be taken away tomorrow. But then I get out here and all I think is this is it. This is why I’m working so hard.”
Seaweed for the win: Connie examines a long strand of rockweed.
Learn more Salty Science on their website and Instagram account.