Pacific sand crab ~ 11/25/13 ~ Asilomar Beach

Pacific mole crab / Pacific sand crab

Emerita analoga

They look like delicately patterned cracked egg shells. At first, I didn't think these pics were ideal as an ID entry, but it occurred to me that I tend to see the carapaces of sand crabs more often than actual live crabs, which has been late at night while looking for grunion.  Are they nocturnal?  I'm assuming the numerous carapaces are from a mass molt, rather than a mass die-off of sand crabs, but I don't really know. I'm always amazed how the composition of wrack changes through the seasons. Here's a mixture of sand crab carapaces, various red seaweeds, and surf-grass. It's nature's compost by the sea.

ps - In the first photo, directly behind the right carapace, the out-of-focus green surf-grass is covered in pink-colored crusting red algae called Melobesia mediocrus.

grunion greeting, 2011 #1

grunion greeting
new moon, 10:20-11:25, clear skies

Yep, it's that time of year again - grunion greeting... er, no greeting as the case may be for Andy and me. I can't believe this will be our third year participating in this Pepperdine University study. For those who are not familiar, there are small silvery green ocean fish called grunion (Leuresthes tenuis) that spawn on California beaches during high tides, sometimes in massive numbers. The highest tides occur at night around the new and full moon and are the best times to spot grunion runs. Monterey Bay and San Francisco Bay are the northern limits of where grunion have been reported. We've only seen them a handful of times, like on June 7, 2009, May 25, 2009, and May 24, 2009. Folks in warmer southern California can regularly see massive runs during the spring and summer months. My favorite disco video of grunion I've found is on YouTube.

I previously incorrectly named our standard grunion beach as Del Monte Beach. Since the spring of 2009 when I was figuring out a name for this location, both google and mapquest maps have changed. This is the beach that is closest to the commercial wharf, aka Wharf 2, and I often refer to it as "the pier" in grunion greeting posts as shown in the first photo above. I think technically this beach belongs to the City of Monterey and may not be included in the expansive Monterey State Beach. I don't know who's in charge of drawing lines in the sand.

As for the second picture above, that was a plane with all its lights on coming in for a landing at our local airport. Impromptu sky art. Hey, gotta do something when the grunion don't show for their own party.

Finally, the last picture is of mating Pacific sand crabs, aka Pacific mole crabs (Emerita analoga). We saw hundreds of them in about the same place that we've seen grunion. Interesting to note, for all the times we've been out on the beach at night looking for grunion, the only other time we saw sand crabs was the 2010 June new moon.

grunion greeting, 2010 #4

grunion greeting
new moon cycle, 10:40-11:35pm, clear skies

No grunion, but it was an interesting time, nonetheless. There were a lot of cars on the lower part of the pier with very few obvious fishermen... maybe because it was Saturday night, or the hot weather kept people out on the beach with bonfires, or a delayed airing of the World Cup was playing at the pub on the other side of the pier. With all the lights and no Charlie sighting this year, we didn't expect to see much grunion activity. We did see a couple fancy schmancy, lighted, remote-controlled flying toys and hundreds of small sand crabs in the surf.