When you first enter Pools, the East Pools teleporter is underwater and you need to solve a small puzzle where you have to touch sea anemone in order to lower the water level.
This puzzle can be skipped by activating specific checkpoints and then dying at specific spots:
- Activate the checkpoint next to Tokk and die to the spikes above the fishing Moki
- Activate the checkpoint at the left of the slime bellow Tokk and die to the lower spikes on the right wall
The game basically trace a line between where you died and where you will respawn and if this line touches the end of the puzzle, it will solve it for you.
Once you skipped the puzzle, you can either reload your savefile or die in order to respawn directly on the teleporter.
It's also important to know that if you get the East Pools Teleporter pickup or if you spawned at East Pools, the puzzle will already be solved.