The kings are coming. As the new year begins, the highest tides of the year along the Northern California coast surge ashore—swirling across jetties, smashing against cliffs, engulfing beaches, inundating mudflats, pummeling piers. Their watery domain extends so far inland that it seems, for a moment, as if the world is being remade.

When the tide retreats, logs lie tossed like twigs along the shore. Tangles of kelp cling to rocks. The sand where the sea pranced just hours before shimmers like a vast mirror reflecting a silvery sky. In newly exposed tidepools, an underwater realm rarely touched by air or light opens–a window into the secrets of the deep.