Opinion ID: 1190882
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: ) Factual Distinctions

Text: Our view of the facts makes it unnecessary to decide whether the situation is as simple in all cases involving land between the ocean's mean high tide and the visible line of upland vegetation as the Court of Appeals believed it to be. We take as a point of departure that the court in Hay necessarily meant, when it used the phrase, mean high tide, that the dry-sand area actually was adjacent to an ocean. The entire opinion clearly assumes such to be the case, and does not claim any public right by virtue of custom for any dry-sand area situated somewhere else. This assumption underlying State ex rel. Thornton v. Hay is critical, because the record persuades us that Little Whale Cove is not a part of the ocean and, therefore, the narrow beach east of it is not a part of the dry-sand area along the Pacific shore to which the court referred. Our conclusion is based primarily on our acceptance of Caldwell's testimony as being the more definitive and persuasive. Like the trial judge, we are persuaded by the pond's profiles in animal and plant life, salinity, oxygen, and temperature that it is not an intertidal pool. It is a uniquely located freshwater pool formed at the coast where a basalt dam prevents two freshwater streams from discharging directly into the ocean. Because Little Whale Cove is not a part of the ocean, the location of its beach is not congruent with the Hay court's assumption that it was speaking of beaches that bordered on the ocean. This beach, although near the ocean, does not border on it. Hay does not by its terms support the state in this case.