full moon cycle, 11:33-12:46, cloudy skies
Greet, greet, greet. Why, hello. Welcome. The grunion (Leuresthes tenuis) did not disappoint for a second night in a row. I'm debating as to which Walker Scale rating to call this run. I'm leaning towards reporting it as a W-4. The character of this run was very different than the night before. It's difficult to say if there were more fish overall, but they were definitely more heavily concentrated in a much smaller area of beach and for a shorter amount of time. Andy walked it out and figured they stretched across about 15 yards wide at the most numerous, whereas the previous night they stretched at least 2-3 times that length. This
run didn't last long. In fact, it was pretty much done by high tide of
11:50. It's a good thing we arrived early. What struck us was that
these fish were significantly smaller in size than last night. Younger, maybe? The waves were extremely gentle, and we noted how loud the fish slapping sound was. Amazing. Charlie didn't show up until we were getting ready to leave.
The human activity on the pier was also very different from Saturday night, even though this was a holiday night. It was pretty much deserted, except for one lady I recognized from our annual Easter festivities and from around town. I was sad to discover she's obviously homeless. She seemed embarrassed and tried to hide in the porta potty (she kept peeking out to see if we were still standing there), so I didn't start a conversation with her. If I see her again during the daylight, I'll see what I can do for her. Sometimes I wonder if we're considered weirdos for going out in the middle of the night to watch fish. Seriously. We tried to rally friends to come out and meet us since this is such a rare local occurrence, the last time being the summer of 2007, six years ago! Even with lots of returned enthusiasm, only two former classmates of Andy's showed up. They're both teachers, one in elementary and the other in high school science. We walked the beach towards the cement structure and found another small patch of scouts and maybe 5-20 grunion per big wave. We laughed at how in past years, we would have been over the moon to see 20 grunion. It was a good night for us. Sigh.
10 comments:
That is SO COOL!!! Great to see it--I've never been. Nice work. =) Go, fishies, GO!
Fish running in the night...thank you for sharing this. I saw grunion under a big moon many years ago on Laguna Beach...no photos and yet I remember the spectacle well.
Taking shelter in a Porte Potty...this is dire...
I spoke to a woman outside the P.O. the other day who told me she hates the shelters... What to do?
Thanks, bb. It's great that after all this time, we finally got to see a major run.
Jeannette, remember the article in the Weekly on homeless women a couple months back? There are places for vets and young mothers, but older women fall through the program cracks. I've been keeping an eye on the homeless situation in Monterey, but I didn't make it to the symposium at MPC last weekend. It's starting to get to a critical mass here. For me, it's talking to homeless individuals and figuring out if I have the resources to do something, one person at a time.
I'm totally blown away by these photos. This is amazing!
So the grunion run is real? It's not some urban legend your high school buddies made up to fool you because you are a nerd interested in biology? Ok, I could look it up but I would rather read about it on your blog. They are, um, spawning on the beach, that is, exchanging reproductive material but not laying eggs? Bizarre nature on the beach at night. Homeless - I had a man stop me at my gate in the country last week with a long story and ask if I had a place for him to live. I believed him pretty much but this is not a good setting for strangers to approach country folks. Especially with several criminals running around breaking into houses. Then it makes you think of grunion with no where to do their spawning. We've got limited resources that need to be used wisely. Somehow throwing up doesn't fit into that picture. It is like you were provided an evening of very wide contrasts to ponder.
Yep, Cindy, grunion greeting does sound like a snipe hunt, doesn't it? After going out 24 times over 3 years with barely any grunion sightings, it felt a bit like a massive practical joke.
A female wiggles her body down into the high tide sand where she lays bright orange-colored eggs. The males cluster around her exposed head and release a cloudy looking milt. This happens remarkably fast within the time span of a wave receding. Then they all wiggle, slither, and flop back towards the water to catch the next wave out. The eggs incubate in moist, not wet, sand until the next highest tides when the hatchlings get washed out into the ocean. I think I read somewhere that the eggs can delay longer if the tides are not high enough to agitate them to hatch.
It's my blog policy to try not to parrot what's found elsewhere, so here's better layman info: http://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/grunion.asp#life_history
Most interesting. The only thing somewhat comparable is the annual smelt run on Lake Superior. Smelt feeds used to be very common at churches and Legion Post. Unfortunately rarely now...
That's wild.
Mr. T, I was starting to feel sorry for the Lake Superior smelt until I looked it up and discovered rainbow smelt were an accidental introduction to the Great Lakes and are now showing the typical exotic species population decline after an initial invasive spike. Those church feeds must have been fun.
Joe, yep.
Wild and orange at that. Go fishes!
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