The Tide Pool Starfish Earrings

A Billion Starfish

In the 1950s, with every summer tide, hundreds of starfish would wash ashore. We picked them up because they were there. At the tidepools, a foot or two deep, we’d roll rocks over, and underneath, there would be a dozen starfish stuck to the backsides. Sea Urchins are the same. We loved to show off to tourist kids. We’d ask them to hold their hand out, set a starfish tentacle side down, and the starfish would start walking. The tentacles tickled. Tourist kids loved it.

To be a local Mainer with a new audience of kids from away every week was the ultimate summer job for a 10-year-old.

This is the Cover
of Our 1999 Summer Catalog
The Starfish Were Ten Inches Across

Summer 1999. I’d heard from Jim, our in-house catalog guy, about the monster starfish under his dock on Great Diamond Island. We were talking about our fall catalog cover. He said he had starfish the size of dinner plates under his dock. I didn’t believe him. He said they were all colors: red, orange and purple. I didn’t believe him. As we continued searching for a cover, Jim brought it up several more times, and he said he had long poles to fish them out.

Finally, I said I’ll take the ferry out. So, one fine August morning, I departed Custom House Wharf with a five-gallon galvanized pail. Still doubtful, I met Jim at the dock. As we walked up the dock, I looked over the edge and could see hundreds of starfish in the shadows. They were deep, and I couldn’t quite gauge the size. Jim got a twelve-foot pole with a net on the end, and we began fishing. We pulled them up slowly, one at a time. They were huge. Some bigger than dinner plates. We collected a dozen.

I filled my pail with starfish and saltwater. I said to Jim, “Are the rocks out here radioactive? I’ve never seen starfish so big.” Jim said, “No. There have been starfish under this dock as long as I’ve lived here.” I went back on the next boat to Portland and headed to our family cottage at Higgins Beach in Scarborough to meet the incoming tide.

Growing up, every August tide would have hundreds of starfish swept in with seaweed and sea urchins. Thousands in a week would come ashore. They were tiny, the size of a quarter, the medium size, near the size of a silver dollar. Big ones might be half the size of a saucer, but never, ever monster-size starfish, dinner plate size.

The tide was coming in. I took my pail of starfish up to the cliffs and tide pools and began setting them about. If you’ve ever handled starfish, they have hundreds of tentacles with sticky cups on the bottom, and they move. The starfish can walk, not quite a scurry, clearly though they have a mind of their own. Put three or seven in a tide pool, and they begin racing off slowly in different directions.

The starfish were the stars of this photo shoot. I have pictures of them in tide pools with waves coming in. I have them on rocks with seaweed. I have them on the beach with waves sweeping in.

What you also can’t see are the dozen kids who followed me that afternoon and stood around in a circle asking questions. The number one question was, “Where did you get those monster starfish?” The number two question was, “Where do I get a starfish that big?” The number three question was, “When you are done with them, can I have one?”

I spent a fair amount of time getting the kids to stand back far enough so that they wouldn’t cast shadows. A couple of hours at the shore made a great catalog cover.