- Alright, I'm gonna
slowly move this rock out of the way and see if I can get him up close
for the cameras. Here we go. Ah! Ah, look at that pincher. Oh, he's trying to get me. I'm gonna let go of
that arm right there. Oh, look at that, look at that. - [Cameraman] Can you show
me the top side of him? (screams) (dramatic music) - As the morning sun
rose above the horizon, I sat and watched as the
tide slowly began to recede. One wave at a time,
the shoreline gradually exposed itself, revealing
a slippery obstacle course of rocky terrain. Welcome to the Pacific
side of Costa Rica, where if you arrive at low tide and know the right
places to search, the ecosystem is alive
with sea creatures. Check this out! Looks like I'm sitting
at the edge of a river, but this is in fact,
a tide going back out into the ocean. Now, I know you
guys often wonder how do you find the
creatures in Beyond the Tide. We wait for the tide to go out, and then we backtrack into
the small tidal pools, and that's where you find
animals that are stranded. Alright, let's head up this way to see what we can find. My favorite thing
about ocean tide pools is that you never
know what you're going to come across. And our first
discovery of the day was one of the
strangest creatures we have ever stumbled upon. Oh, my gosh, look
at how big it is. - [Cameraman] Oh, what is that? - [Coyote] That is an animal, that is a zebra
worm right there. It is alive, I can
feel it contracting. Look, now it looks
more like a worm. - [Cameraman] That
is a huge worm. Is that as big as they get? - Oh, they get bigger than that. They can stretch up
to 50 times in length. Look at that, look
at how far that thing stretches out! It just keeps going! - [Cameraman] I feel
like it's gonna break. - It's getting even bigger! Look at that! Whoa! Wow, okay. Alright, I'm putting this
guy back under his rock. Moving carefully
down the shoreline, our goal is to track
the receding tide so that we could stay as close to the ocean as possible. These freshly exposed
pools are generally cooler in temperature, which in
turn, increases the chances of finding sea life. And it wasn't long
before we had our next animal encounter. Oh, wow! Look at this pocket of water, it's completely filled
with little slugs. You know what these are? These are warty sea cats. It'll be a lot easier
for you to see them if we get some water in
this plastic container. Now, we've shown you
guys the black sea hare and the brown sea hare, and this is also a
variety of sea slug, but they're a little
bit different. Oh, they're everywhere! They're like on the
sides of the rocks! Come on, guys, I'm just
gonna collect you up and put you in this container. Whoa! - [Cameraman] A lot of slugs. - That is a container of slugs. See how quickly I was
able to collect 'em. They're probably
about 60 or 70 of them right in this pocket. And look at that, you
can 'em so much better now that they're in
this clear container, but they're unbelievably
camouflaged on this algae, and that's actually what
they are feeding on. Now, similar to
the brown sea hare and the black sea hare, they also have rhinophores
which are those little appendages
that are growing up off of the top of their heads and right up front
on their mouths, Now, the ones on top
sense light and movement, and the ones on the
front of the face sense chemicals in
the environment, specifically food and
it also helps them to communicate with each other. Now, you're maybe
wondering to yourself, do these creatures
have skeletons. No, they do not. Slugs are actually
gastropods which means that they have a shell that
protects their organs. Now, something like a snail
has an external shell, but slugs like this
or the brown sea hare, the black sea hare
have an internal shell and I can actually
feel that in there, it feels like a little pebble and that is where all
of its major organs are being kept. Oh, look at the bottom of it. That's its foot right there. Has a big muscle that
helps it slink along on the base into the tide pool. And up front, it does have
a scratchy little tongue called a radula, and
that's what they're using to almost vacuum cleaner
up all of this algae. Now, all you have to
do is massage the slug a little bit, and it's getting extremely
slimy and very gummy. Wow, oh, it's
unbelievably sticky, and the more I handle it, the
more it secretes this mucus. Now, it doesn't
injure the animal in any way to do this, that's actually helping
keep it's body moist, and of course it's
thinking, "Uh oh, "am I going to be eaten?" If so, that mucus
is slightly toxic. It's not gonna harm me at all, but look at how the
slug just slinks along in my hand. I didn't think we
were gonna come across a slug way out
here in Costa Rica, ut sure enough no
matter where you go, we're always coming
across slugs. Alright, let's keep
heading this way and see what else we can find. - [Cameraman] What you
see in there, Coyote? - [Coyote] A pretty
angry-looking crab. Look at how he's wedged
his body into this rock. He's defending himself
with that pincher, look at that. Alright, I'm gonna
slowly move this rock out of the way and
see if I can get him up close for the cameras. Here we go. Ah, ah! Look at that pincher. Now, the pinchers on
the front of this crab are pretty serious. If you can see, that's
a monster pincher. This may be some
variety of stone crab. Oh, oh, he's trying to get me. I'm gonna let go of
that arm right there. Oh, look at that, look at that. - [Cameraman] Can you show
me the top side of him? (screams) - Oh, he got me good! Look at that, look at my finger. He just crunched the
top of my finger. That really hurt! Oh, my gosh! Oh, that puts a purple
shore crab to shame. I think at this juncture,
he has definitely earned the right to be
defended in that corner. My finger is bleeding, let's just move on
and see what else we can find here in these
Costa Rican tide pools. Ouch! This is perfect. - [Cameraman] Where,
what do you see? - All of this, right here. Now, all of these rocks
are very flippable. I have a feeling if we
start flipping some, we're gonna find
exactly what it is that we've been looking for. Okay, this could be a
great rock right here. You can see that it's
slightly above the water, yet a lot of it's under. Now, creature wanna
stay in the shade where it's cooler. A lot of crevices
up underneath this. I'm gonna flip it, and
let's see what's under it. You ready? - [Cameraman] Yup. - [Coyote] Oh, yes, right there! Alright, hold on. Whoa! You know what those are? - [Cameraman] They look
like hairy octopus. - [Coyote] They do, oh! You think I should pick it up? - [Cameraman] I don't know. Is it safe? - [Coyote] Looks like
it's probably dangerous with all of those
spines on the tentacles, but, these are in
fact brittlestars. This is actually one
of the most common tide pool species you will find. Over 2,000 species
of these worldwide and they can be found in
every single ocean system, even the north and south pole, those frigid waters are
home to brittle stars. You may be thinking
to yourself, well, it kind of looks
like a caterpillar that has a bunch
of spikes on it. Is this venomous,
is it poisonous? Coyote, are you in any
sort of danger right now? Actually, the brittlestar
is completely harmless. Now, on the underside,
they have little tiny tube feet, very
similar to a sea star. - [Cameraman] Now,
they're not sea stars. - No, but they are
related to sea stars. And right there in the
middle, that's its mouth. But not only is that its mouth, it's also its butt. They eat and excrete
their waste from the exact same hole. Now, the jaws of this
creature are very unique. It actually has five
jaws, kind of like my fingers there, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp. And as they're moving
across the basin of the tide pool, they're feasting on
all sorts of algae and decomposing plant matter. And when the tide is
going out like this, these creatures can actually
move rather quickly. Watch this part, I'll put
it right here in the algae and watch it move. Really cool the
way that they can just kind of adhere
to the environment and then slink down
in between the rocks. Now, let's talk about the
appendages of this creature. You see all of these
bristles that run down the length of the tentacles. Those are actually
used in locomotion, and you can see they completely
surround the tentacle which allows this creature
to be very ambidextrous as it moves through the
tide pool environment. Now, this creature
is capable of losing except for one of its legs. Now, a sea star can
lose all of its legs and most species do
regenerate their limbs, but, this guy, as long
as he's get one leg, he's gonna be just fine. Well, between the
crab, the slugs and this brittlestar,
I would definitely say that we have come across
some bizarre creatures here in the Costa
Rican tide pools. I'm Coyote Peterson, be brave, stay wild, we'll see you on
the next adventure! Alright, buddy, back
under the rocks you go. That was cool. If you thought these
Costa Rican tide pool creatures were fascinating, make sure to go back and watch the first episode
of Beyond the Tide where we get up close
with a deadly sea snake. And don't forget, subscribe so you can join me and the crew on our next aquatic adventure! Oh, cool, check this out,
we got a little cove! This could be the perfect
spot to find creatures. Come on up. - [Cameraman] It's
really slippery. - [Coyote] Good, yeah,
watch your footing. - [Cameraman] Okay. - [Coyote] Alright,
going down in there. Oh, there's an eel!
