humpback whale ~ 09/15/14 ~ Pacific Grove Shoreline Park

humpback whale

Megaptera novaeangliae

We've had an extraordinary showing of humpback whales in the Monterey Bay recently, and today was the best so far!  The Monterey Bay Whale Watch states 70 humpbacks were spotted in the a.m., with 79 midday, and 84 (a heck of a lot!) on a bonus evening tour (as is shown here with that whale watching boat that got way too close).  Most of the road (Oceanview to Sunset) along PG's Shoreline Park was unusually crowded with landlubbers and several seriously ginormous camera lenses that likely cost more than my car, all pointing towards the water.  It was a great show.  Without binoculars, we could easily spot 4 very active areas (lots of blows) that didn't seem to move much.  Usually, the activity drifts or disappears after a few minutes.  This apparently lasted for hours.  Very cool.

Kinda crazy, and just goes to show how ignorant I can be sometimes, but humpback whales are still listed as federally endangered.  Ya.  No kidding.  That surprised me.  They were delisted from IUCN's Vulnerable status to Least Concern in 2008.

Here are extra humpback whale links: SIMoN Special Status Species, Marine Species Identification Portal, Marine Bio, Society for Marine Mammalogy, and Wild Whales (out of British Columbia).

I should mention that there were also 200 long-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus capensis), with 1500 seen 2 days ago, September 13, 2014.  Amazing.

sea butterfly ~ 07/16/14 ~ Asilomar Beach

pseudoconch of the sea butterfly

Corolla spectabilis

Given my fondness for butterflies, I did not, however, make up the name.  There were a handful of these firm, flexible, and bumpy clear things washed up along the tide line.  It resembles and actually fit like one of those rubber finger tips that old school secretaries used to file paperwork.  I liken finding the pseudoconch similar to finding an empty snail shell.  Online pictures of the animal itself make no sense to me.  Click the scientific name above for an excellent diver's summary with gorgeous photos.  Apparently, the sea butterfly is more closely related to the sea hare than the floating sea snail.  Go figure.  Marine life is such an alien world to me.

ps 10/09/16 - Apparently these don't seem to have a particular season.  Andy and I went out to Asilomar today and found numerous sea butterfly carcasses on the beach.

grunion greeting, 2014 #4

female California grunion dug in sand laying eggs

while 4 males cluster around her head

Leuresthes tenuis
(CDFW)

 

It was all about the group fish p0rn this late 3rd night, high tide after the full moon.  We spotted numerous clusters of 4-5 males per female, as compared to one on one.  This only seems to happen when the runs are heavier, which makes sense.  The females are quite acrobatic, flipping themselves straight up into the air out of the sand to catch the next big wave back to the ocean.  It's totally fun to watch under the light of the full moon.

open season
4 spotted cusk-eels, 1 northern anchovy(?), several grunion

Steve the Fisherman was there (must recruit him!) with 6 other people and 2 buckets when we arrived.  They were the same folks from last year June 8 when Bob Lea measured fish.  They remembered me and asked if I wanted take measurements of their hand catch.  I did, which is a little tricky with wet fish and wet paper and wet pen and wet sand.  Have I mentioned it was wet?  And cold?  I have no idea what I was doing.  They told me they arrived around 10:30, started seeing cusk-eels around 11, and then the grunion followed with ~25 at a time.  I was impressed with how much they knew.  There was a tiny silver fish in their bucket (at 3 o'clock above) that did not look like a grunion.  I'm totally making a guess that it's an anchovy, because my other flash pics of it in my hand, in the dark, did not provide any detail.

W-2 (shown above) and possible W-3 closer to the wharf

grunion greeting

Considering the bucket-toting folks were next to the wharf, Andy and I walked down the beach. About 250 yards down, there were another couple spots of grunion.  We stood between the two locations for most of our watch.  Andy walked down to the cement structure past a bonfire group, and he didn't find any additional grunion spots.  A couple hundred came up in a few waves around 12:30, but mostly it was maybe a dozen to 30 or so at a time over the course of 45 minutes that we observed them.  When we returned to the wharf, the group described hundreds coming up onto a long flat section of the beach.  It sounded like a W-3 to me.  For Monterey, this was a good grunion night.  To compare with my past observations, click to see a definite W-3 and a fantastic W-4.

06/12/14 full moon 9:13pm
06/14/14 high tide 11:51pm 6.16 ft
beaches: Municipal
Charlies: 6 + 1 western gull + flock of unknown gulls
others: Andy, Steve the Fisherman, 6 other people grunion fishing by hand, and a bonfire group
my observation time: 11:29pm - 12:57pm
W-2, 30 at a time already running on arrival, couple hundred at a time max

sunrise ~ 06/13/14 ~ at home

squid boats at sunrise

There seems to be an unusual number of squid boats this year.  They light up the night with their squid lights, green, red, white.  It's Christmas!  Ooof, now that I read that old post, maybe I say there's an unusual number every year?  Ha!  That's partly why we moved bedrooms, because for several months of the year we had very bright night lights.  Thanks to the incredibly fast growing Monterey pines, that soon may not be a problem for us.  Because of the funny way sound carries across the water, I can sometimes hear their conversations on their boats from our balcony.  Many seem to be from outside of the Monterey Bay area.  I wonder if squid fishermen are nomads, following their catch.  I also wonder what else they catch in their nets besides squid, because surely there are other larger animals who would also like to eat squid. The young male sea lions are making a racket down by the Coast Guard Pier, the harbor seals seemed to have doubled in numbers, and a lone, young male elephant seal is being a bully at Hopkins.  There have been high counts for other marine mammal sightings in the Monterey Bay - 56 humpbacks and 150 Pacific white-sided dolphins on June 11, 2014 in a.m. only!  Just to note, last night was grunion greeting for the June full moon.  I didn't go.  Maybe tonight?

grunion greeting, 2014 #3

prejuvenile spotted cusk-eel

Chilara taylori

(Kindergarten-level info)

While we were out on the nighttime beach looking for grunion, it quickly became all about the cusk-eel for J and me.  Armed with a flashlight under the complete darkness of the clear skies and new moon, we eventually found 4 or 5 after waves washed out (we had different counts, and we didn't even need a 2nd hand to count - ha!).  They seemed a bit lethargic, kind of like the grunion I observed on May 15 (Something weird is going on, because even in SoCal the grunion are inexplicably beaching themselves and not in a good way.)  One cusk-eel we found wiggled its entire body down, tail first, not too dissimilar to what a grunion does when she lays eggs, except the cusk-eel completely disappeared into the sand.  We also noticed numerous mini-craters that noisily bubbled water as the waves receded.  J kept saying, "It totally sounds like a spa!"  Ya, the waves were relatively calm this night for us to hear the bubbling.  We're wondering if all the cratered holes were created by the freshly dug cusk-eels?  There were also a handful of cancer crabs and sand crabs digging down in the sand, but nothing thin enough to make a drill-like hole.

It's thanks to Dr. Guacamole (that's not his real name, btw) for alerting me to the fact my crappy photo "eel" from July 9, 2013 was a cusk-eel, but all I could recall to tell J this night was that it wasn't a real eel and was actually a fish.  Dr. Martin also chimed in and eventually I was able to get "retired" CDFW Bob Lea's expert ID down to species.  He cowrote the technical report Checklist of Fishes Known to Occur in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary with Erica Burton last year.  And thankfully, considering I'm bugging some very busy people with my ID questions, they were glad to get my observations and photos.  I'm guessing not a lot of people report cusk-eel sightings.  This is only the second time I've ever seen them in all my grunion nights.  I've seen grunion more times than cusk-eels, and that might be saying something. 

I found the burrowing tail first to be fascinating, especially in the exact same spot we've seen the grunion lay eggs.  What makes this beach so great for these sand-loving fish?  The extremely calm waters and fine sand?  With Bob's permission, this is what he said about my photo above, "The cusk-eel is a prejuvenile Spotted Cusk-eel, Chilara taylori.  At this size the spots have not yet developed; I am guessing the fish in photo is ca. 5 to 6 inches in length.  Cusk-eels enter the substrate tail first and their caudal structure is modified, fusion of bony elements, enabling them to do this.  There have been several papers discussing tail-standing and burrowing in cusk-eels and I can send you the references if you are interested.  Chilara taylori was originally described from the beach at Monterey in 1858.  We encountered prejuvenile fish last year (July or August) solving a puzzle that I did not know the answer to until then.  Also, the prejuvenile stage is nektonic and the fish you saw are in the transition process of changing from a pelagic to benthic existence.  Good to get your observation."  Man, it's been forever since I've seen someone use "ca." - no offense to Bob.  Fortunately, after having watched Bob measure grunion last year, I thought to throw down my lined-note pad next to the cusk-eel for a photo and then later the lined-note pad with a ruler to get an accurate read of size (I don't take my favorite ruler out for fear of losing it in the waves).  So, I sent a second set of photos.  The one shown above is only ~3 3/4" long, which turns out to be in the typical 70 to 100mm range.  Bob collected 20 specimens last year, and they're now housed at CalAcademy (CAS 236552).  I wonder how long they live?  Holes and infrequent sightings make me think of periodical cicadas which develop en masse every 13 or 17 years.

I should mention that I had a very difficult time finding an ID match online a couple weeks back when I was updating my July 9, 2013 post, but that's not surprising for marine life.  Little did I know the cusk-eels I've seen aren't the fully spotted adults yet.  Ha!  There are several SCUBA divers' community groups that share wonderful photos of marine animals.  Makes me wonder if any of them have ever seen grunion, because so little is known about their behavior off the sand and in the water.

Charlie

black-crowned night heron
Nycticorax nycticorax

I'm always entertained by Charlie.  Over the course of half an hour 3 Charlies showed up and were unusually friendly with us as we stood at the water line with them.  I think they snatched up a couple tiny cusk-eels.

grunion greeting

Leuresthes tenuis 

(CDFW)

Eh, we only saw 2 waves of 6 grunion each (whippee) not too far from the cement structure down the beach.  I reported it as a W-1, because Dr. Martin instructed me that any sighting at all is significant for the Monterey Bay.  It was a mellow night, good to be out with J, and always fun to find new things.  Oh!  We also quickly stopped at San Carlos Beach on our way home.  No grunion there.

05/28/14 full moon 11:43am
05/29/14 high tide 11:18pm 5.52 ft
beaches: Municipal, San Carlos
Charlies: 3 + 3 western gulls
others: J, Steve the Fisherman (yes, he was there - I should recruit him!)
my observation time: 10:27pm - 12:10pm
W-1, 2 sets of 6 (same individuals?) near cement structure down beach 11:33-11:38pm.

grunion greeting, 2014 #2

 fish p0rn

female grunion dug in sand and laying eggs

while male releases cloudy milt around her head

Leuresthes tenuis
(CDFW)

 

unusually small male, others were lethargic

W-1 (shown above) and at times W-2

grunion greeting

We try to arrive about 1/2 hour before high tide, because our experience has been if the grunion are going to run, they will usually have already started.  We also know that if we spot a black-crowned night heron (aka Charlie) on the beach as we pull up on the pier, there will be grunion.  This held true for both Wednesday (no blog post) and Thursday nights.  If there isn't too much human interference, we noticed the Charlies seem to know when the grunion are done and fly away. 

I submitted both night's reports to Dr. Martin through her online form and sent her an e-mail per her request because grunion sightings in Monterey are not common.  She invited me as her guest to the first Ocean Science Trust conference held at Asilomar last month.  The various perspectives on crunchable Citizen Science were extremely helpful to me as I embark on my own project.  Thank you, Dr. Martin!

I'm reformatting my typical grunion greeting blog posts, now 5 years after we began.  Man, I can't believe we've been doing this so long... okay, we did skip a year, because we got so discouraged from too many late nights with no grunion sightings.  I hope to add better information this year, although reading back through our experiences has been fun.

  

05/14/14 full moon 12:18pm
05/14/14 high tide 10:42pm 5.8 ft
beaches: Municipal
Charlies: 4 + 1 western gull
others: Chris Tenney, Dr. Matsumoto & friends, Steve the Fisherman
my observation time: 10:15pm - 11:45pm
W-1, 25-50 already running on arrival
 

05/15/14 high tide 11:22pm 5.87 ft

beaches: Municipal, San Carlos, Asilomar

Charlies: 5 + 1 western gull

others: J, Steve the Fisherman, Dr. Guacamole & crew
my observation time: 10:45pm - 12:15am
W-2, 100's already running on arrival

Pacific sardine ~ 04/02/14 ~ Coast Guard Pier

Pacific sardine

Sardinops sagax caerulea

(for more information click here and here)

Since I live here and walk Cannery Row on a near daily basis, I feel like I should appreciate the history of Monterey's sardine boom, bust, and return a little more.  But, I don't... that is, until the marina guys offered me as many sardines as I could carry.  Oho!  Uh, two would have been plenty, thanks. They're way bigger than what you get in a can, but really not all that big, coming in at 10" even.  After scaling, beheading, gutting, and attempting to remove backbone and ribs in one fell swoop for 7 sardines, I am now fully aware one of my previous posts of small silvery fish was incorrect.  It was hard for me not to turn a quick fish cleaning into a dissection exercise (Oh, is that the liver? This one must be a girl. What is that!?!  Etc.)  Eh.  At this point without any other sardine cooking practice, I'd say I prefer canned sardines for the 2 times a year I crave them.  Andy was a trooper and patiently picked through the surprisingly tough bones.  Only later did one of the fellas tell me that larger sardines are not considered as good to eat as the smaller ones with softer bones.  Sigh.  Now, I just need to make friends with a crab potter...

ps 01/15/15 - Here's an interesting blog post about historical Cannery Row.

wordless Wednesday

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.

Pacific sea nettle ~ 11/25/13 ~ Coast Guard Pier

Pacific sea nettle

Chrysaora fuscescens

The sea nettles have been in great abundance near the shore this past month.  Their sudden appearance seems kind of random, as I've also seen large numbers in the middle of summer.  I wonder if they passively float along with the water currents, or if they actively follow food.  I wouldn't want to be a surfer or a scuba diver, because some days there are so many nettles that I imagine it would be impossible to avoid getting stung, at least on exposed hands.  Being the land lover that I am, I generally don't pay much attention to them, but they are kind of pretty in a brown sort of way. When they die, they turn a ghostly white and tend to sink (didn't get a good picture of this).  I've watched western gulls and opal eye awkwardly try to eat them.  I realized this morning that I hadn't really looked up information yet, and I was interested to see how different aquariums present their online information (sea nettles are apparently relatively easy to keep in captivity): Monterey Bay Aquarium, Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco, National Aquarium in Baltimore.  I have to say I've been impressed with the improvements MBA has made to their site over the past few years.

CA sea hare ~ 09/18/13 ~ Coast Guard Pier

California sea hare (more pictures)

Aplysia californica

There's a balcony behind the boaters' bathrooms that offers a direct downward view of the water.  It's a spot I like to check during my daily walks.  I often find interesting things there, like night herons. In past years I've only seen a sea slug here or there off in the distance.  Then, about 2 weeks ago, I started spotting a dozen or more sea slugs on the rocks and hanging on for dear life to waving giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera). It's wild. What these pictures don't really show is how huge these are! I'd say the light-colored one in the first picture was at least 14 inches long.  Then that clump of sea slugs to the right of it, had an individual that probably exceeded 18 inches long.  No joke.  Notice the one on top of the clump, and how it does indeed resemble a hare?  These sea hares both fascinate me and gross me out, mainly because of their size.  I still haven't quite figured out how they're related to nudibranchs.  In any case, there's some interesting information about them, partly because they're apparently used extensively in research.  Who knew?  In addition to my usual links in the ID above, here are some more, since this is a new animal for me:

Aquarium of the Pacific

Sea Slug Forum (I'm amazed at the stuff I find online.  A sea slug forum.  Really?)

Byrne Lab

brembs.net

io9

squidoo (I haven't decided if I like this format yet or not.)

ps 09/25/13 - Amazing!  The CA sea hares laid eggs!  Bright yellow masses that appear to cling to the rocks.  I'm hoping to get back there with a camera.

pss 03/06/14 - Here are a couple colorful sea slug blog posts:  Bourbon, Bastards, and Birds. and Catalogue of Organisms.

grunion greeting, 2013 #4

cusk-eel, grunion, and other fish

grunion

Leuresthes tenuis
more information

grunion greeting

new moon cycle, 11:05-12:39, cloudy skies

This was a pleasant night and a nice way to finish off my birthday activities. When we arrived at the beach, 13 people were already there with buckets containing grunion, cusk-eels, and other fish. The local fisherman in the bunch said they arrived at 10pm and saw about 20 grunion thus far. This was their first time out since learning about grunion from the CA Fish and Wildlife schedule.  The other groups were a young family and a couple individuals.  Somewhat unusual compared to past grunion nights, everyone seemed incredibly respectful of the grunion (e.g., waiting until the female was done laying eggs before collecting her) and curious about what else was on the beach (e.g., Charlie and 3 of his night heron friends, a medium-sized sea turtle making its way parallel to shore, bioluminescence they had witnessed 3 nights before while sardine fishing).

I asked to take a quick picture of one of the small cusk-eels they had in their bucket before they let it go. It's too bad it's such a crappy photo. In any case, I discovered it's very difficult to find online information about the different kinds of eel-like animals. Fishbase.org has a searchable db, but like BugGuide in its early days, it needs more content to truly become a user-friendly site. Can anyone recommend an eel ID site?

At 12:07, we were all starting to pack up when another decent run of 60-80 grunion came up with a big wave. We stayed for the next half hour with another 2 runs at 12:20 and 12:37. I've reported this night as a W-1.  It certainly wasn't as exciting as May 26 (W-4), May 25 (W-3), or June 8 (W-2), 2013, but way better than no grunion (W-0) as has happened too many times in past years.

ps 05/18/14 - Thanks to a grunion greeting e-mail exchange with Dr. Guacamole and Dr. Martin and quotes from Bob Lea, the unidentified eel above has been identified as not a true eel, but a cusk-eel.  As to species, I can't say for sure.  Although, spotted cusk-eel (Chilara taylori) is mentioned quite a bit online for this area.  Paperbone (Lamprogrammus niger) and giant (Spectrunculus grandis) are reported for Monterey Bay as well.

grunion greeting, 2013 #3

 grunion

Leuresthes tenuis
more information

grunion greeting

new moon cycle, 10:23-11:40, cloudy skies

Welp, every grunion greeting night we've done has been a little bit different than the others. The only person we knew who showed up was Bob Lea, a retired marine biologist with the CA Fish and Game (er, Fish and Wildlife).  He has that calm, solid demeanor of someone who has spent a majority of his life outdoors.  There were several other people on the beach and the wharf with buckets and big lights, out to experience the spectacle that is a grunion run.  It's open season now, but I wish it wasn't since grunion in Monterey is such a rare sight.  One lady came for her grandchild, and she ended up having more fun chasing grunion than the boy who was quite scared of the fish.  I laughed at her pure joy and exuberance, even though I felt a little sorry for the mating grunion she snatched up.  Bob convinced a couple of the grunion captors to allow him to measure their caught fish.  In a dry bucket, the grunion quickly lose their blush or mint green glow and become quite silvery.  There was also a luau being held at the recently renamed Del Monte Beach House, complete with 80's dance music and karaoke, judging by the tone-deaf singing we heard.

Once again, the grunion did not disappoint.  Why couldn't we have seen this from 2009-2011? Numerous scouts were first spotted right after we arrived ~10:25.  Then shortly after high tide of 10:43, the grunion runs peaked with a couple hundred on the beach at a time.  The waves had an incredible reach up the sand, leaving many of us soaked.  I'm debating whether to report this as a W-2 or a W-3; the numbers were slightly less than the first night after the full moon 2 weeks ago.  The fish petered out by 11:05, right before last call for alcohol and horrendous singing ensued from the luau. After most of the people left, Charlie and 3 of his night heron buddies joined the after-party.  A gull gobbled up a lone grunion at 11:27.  We ducked out very pleased with our excursion at 11:40.

CA market squid ~ 06/02/13 ~ Wharf No. 2

California market squid

Loligo opalescens (aka Doryteuthis opalescens)

for more information, click here and here

I never realized market squid are so beautifully and intricately patterned when they're still alive and mad at being caught. Usually when I go to the local fish market at the end of the wharf, the squid have been dead for a bit and are ghostly pale white packed on ice.  For a quick primer on why and how squid change their colors, check out U.C. Davis-hosted CA Seafood Council. Usually, the only time I'm aware of the squid fishery in Monterey Bay is when the squid boats light up the bay night. For some reason the boats haven't been around much this year, which is interesting since we're finally having a good grunion year.  I forget people catch squid with poles and multiple splayed hooks that look a bit like miniature tinsel party decorations.  It doesn't take very long to jig a couple times and pull up a squid or two.  These are somewhat smaller than the market squid I've seen conveyor belted off the commercial squid boats.  Calamari anyone?

sea gooseberry ~ 05/28/13 ~ Asilomar Beach

sea gooseberry

Pleurobrachia bachei

These looked very much like glass cat's eye marbles scattered across the sand.  Since we had no idea what these were, we simply called them "jelly beach marbles."  And, that's exactly what I typed in to start my internet search for an ID.  It seems there are plenty of other folks who are wondering what the heck these common little blobs are, too, but there's so much misinformation around, calling them fish eggs (wrong), baby jellyfish (wrong), to salps (wrong, again). Sea gooseberries are a type of comb jelly, aka ctenophore, different than jellyfish and the myriad of other gelatinous animals. There are several spp. of Pleurobrachia found around the world. Fellow bloggers Jessica Winder @ Jessica's Nature Blog and Phil @ Cabinet of Curiosities have some nice pictures of P. pileus found across the pond.  For stunning feeding photos of P. bachei and a gnarly Beroe sp. (another comb jelly), check out Merry at ScubaBoard.com.

Usually, I avoid touching anything jelly-like on the beach for fear of being stung.  This time my curiosity got the better of me.  I poked one and discovered it didn't hurt at all (well, at least not me).  In my attempts to get the lighting and focus just right for a picture (er, 98 pictures!), I managed to smoosh one in my fingers.  Poor thing.  It's very liquidy.  Next time, I'd like to plop a couple into a jar to see them move.  And for those like me who didn't know, especially since local native gooseberries look nothing like this, here's what a traditional gooseberry is.

grunion greeting, 2013 #2

 grunion greeting

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.

grunion greeting, 2013 #1

grunion

Leuresthes tenuis
more information

grunion greeting

full moon cycle, 10:42-12:15, mostly clear skies

Happy dance, happy dance!  Finally!  Here's my long-awaited W-3!!! Woohooo!!!!!  I even called the grunion greeter 1-800 hotline and everything, because you know, I saved the number in my phone all these years.  Awesome.

Grunion runs are better known in SoCal south of Point Conception, although they have been reported as far north as San Francisco Bay.  Back in 2009, Andy and I signed up for this citizen science project, the first ever in Monterey to monitor the unusual grunion spawning runs.  We went out a total of 15 times in 2009, 6 times in 2010, 3 times in 2011, and zero times in 2012. Our biggest previous find was back on June 7, 2009 with a whopping 31 fish.  Over the course of 18 subsequent observation nights through 3 years, we only saw 15, 8, and 2 additional fish. It became too discouraging after a while to stay up so late for the full or new moon cycle high tide, dress extra warmly for the chilly, windy Monterey area beaches (we're definitely not like SoCal where they run around in shorts in the summer - ha!), trudge ourselves to the beach, wait around for an hour and a half or so in the dark, ooh and ahh over dead birds and camped homeless on the beach, stagger our freezing cold, wet, and sandy feet back to... eh-hem, well you get my drift. All for what, to count a handful of fish, maybe?  The worst was trying to function the next day on only a couple hours of sleep after 3 nights in a row.  Dr. Karen Martin at Pepperdine University and I have kept in contact through the years, and she and I have traded both encouragement and discouragement about the situation here in Monterey.  I held out hope.

When we pulled into parking at 10:42 well before the 11:02 high tide time, our good ol' friend Charlie was there with 2 of his night heron buddies and an oddball gull gobbling up fish.  From then until exactly 11:45 huge groups of grunion, maybe 30 to 300 at a time, washed up with each wave, dug themselves into the sand, danced a little dance, and then slithered and flopped back to the water with the next big enough wave.  We saw well over 1000 grunion, if not more. Makes that previous record of 31 from 4 years ago seem kind of paltry.

Okay, so, I fully admit I was molesting the fish by flashing my camera left and right to catch the action.  I still had the nerve to tell people with buckets that grunion season is closed.  Andy wasn't so sure, but I remembered April and May are no collecting months.  One fellow became verbally challenging, which gave Andy a major bad vibe about the guy.  Fortunately, his cohorts were cooperative.  Another fellow was picking up grunion right in front of us and putting them into a plastic shopping bag.  Initially he pretended he couldn't speak English, but I was adamant that he return the fish to the water.  Reluctantly, he did with the intention to return later.  I felt kinda bad for my bullying behavior.  Then, a fellow up on the pier related a story to me of how one time in SoCal a friend of his shouted "La luna, la luna!" and disappeared for a few minutes only to return with bags full of grunion.  They cooked them in tin cans over a fire.  He said they're a sweet tasting fish and the "caviar" was good.  I had the suspicion that he was homeless with a dirty duffel nearby. I liked him because he was very polite and kept calling me "Holy Lady".  We eventually left when we hadn't seen anymore grunion for half an hour.  Plus, the illicit pier activities seemed to uptick after midnight, complete with a man vomiting out of a parked car next to mine.  That was totally gross, and the other stuff made us nervous for our safety.  We're not sure if we're going to out again Sunday night since high tide will be later and the weather is looking chillier.

Humboldt squid ~ 10/27/12 ~ San Carlos Beach

Humboldt squid / jumbo squid

Dosidicus gigas

Very cool!  While I've seen plenty of hand-sized CA market squid (Loligo opalescens, aka Doryteuthis opalescens) offloaded from the squid boats and displayed in, well, the local fish markets, this is the first time I've seen a Humboldt squid alive (i.e., not jarred or dissected at Hopkins).  There were two of these washed up on the beach, slowly flapping those triangle shaped fins.  I would guess this one was a little over 2 feet in length, which apparently is less than half the size they can get in 2 years or less.  

A scuba diver gently lifted them up and returned them to the water.  Another diver told us these good-sized squid have been close to the shore for the past couple of days numbering in the hundreds. Then, yet, another diver proceeded to authoritatively tell some wild story about how these were "queens" and were the only ones that reproduced.  Ha!  I think there's quite a bit of myth surrounding squid, and for good reason.

Humboldt squid have only been seen with any regularity in Monterey Bay for the past 10-15 years since the big 1997-98 El Niño event.  MBARI has been using their ROVs to video and record marine animals and have collected data on Humboldt squid.  There are various guesses as to why they have been moving northward from their breeding grounds off the coast of Mexico.  I'll have to read more about them in the coming days.  What impressed me most about these molluscs were those mammalian-like eyes that seemed to convey thought and intelligence.  Their colors were beautiful, too!

 ps 11/02/12 - The Humboldt squid have made our local news at Monterey County Herald and KSBW with about 100 washing ashore near Hopkins on Tuesday.  Both links contain videos.

surf-grass ~ 09/01/12 ~ Asilomar Beach

surf-grass

Phyllospadix scouleri (possibly P. torreyi)
Zosteraceae

I thought I'd try my hand at IDing between the two Phyllospadix spp. found along the shores of Pacific Grove. This proved to be an exercise in extensive internet searching and comparing information. SEINet states P. scouleri blades can be slightly wider than P. torreyi by up to 2.5mm, significant when they can be as small as 0.5mm. I ignored this site's information on flowering and fruiting periods, because I've found seasonal descriptions are entirely subjective across different lifeforms (e.g. Don Roberson in his Monterey Birds book states semipalmated plovers start their fall migration by late June... June, fall, seriously? And don't get me started on all the incorrect flowering periods published for coastal land plants). Jepson e-Flora states P. scouleri does not have a narrow bract base, whereas P. torreyi does. I could not find a side by side comparison to see what is considered narrow or not. The closest I could find was this University of Washington's page of P. scouleri life history. It's too bad the creators of California Biota Website don't know the difference between female spathes and male spadices, which is all new terminology for me anyways. Although, they do have beautiful pictures. What I have shown in the first picture above is a female spathe with developing fruit. MBARI has a nice summary and clearly states P. scouleri usually has 1, sometimes 2 spathes, and P. torreyi can have 1-5 spathes. Since I only found 1 spathe, I can't use that as a distinguishing factor. In the end, I'm leaning towards P. scouleri simply based on the blade width. Now after all this searching this morning, I'm daydreaming and imagining the above surf-grass could make a lovely mermaid ponytail.

seaweeds ~ 09/01/12 ~ Asilomar Beach

delicate sea lace
Microcladia coulteri

posted 09/10/12 - As I was looking for barnacles the other day in a beachcomber's guide (Thanks, Jennifer!), I found a picture of a red algae that looked very much like this one. Finally, here's an easy ID... or so I thought. I took the name winged fronds, aka winged rib (Delesseria decipiens), from the book to obtain links for my blog post, but what I found online didn't look anything like what was pictured in the book. Bad photo or incorrect ID in the book, I can't say for sure. However, I discovered there are an almost identical form of Microcladia californica and a similar looking species Plocamium pacificum to what I have pictured here. It's difficult to know with certainty, because IDing a small piece of algae washed up on the beach is like trying to ID a plant solely on one dried leaf blown in from who knows where. Both Delesseria decipiens and Plocamium pacificum are saxicolous, meaning they grow on rocks, whereas Microcladia coulteri and M. californica are epiphytic on other algae.

giant kelp and Turkish towel

Macrocystis pyrifera or M. integrifolia and Chondracanthus corymbiferus or C. exasperatus

Geez, I only wanted to show the amazing different textures of these brown and red algal blades. I didn't realize there were different spp. found locally. Without seeing the entire seaweed, it's difficult to know for sure. Note the epiphytic Microcladia on the Turkish towel. As an aside, many brown marine algae are known as kelp. Seaweed is an informal term for marine green, brown, and red algae.

feather boa kelp

Egregia menziesii (now includes E. laevigata)

Finally, a seaweed that I absolutely know the ID. This post took me several mornings to research (click all the blue highlighted links), and I ended up feeling like I was banging my head against an intertidal rock. There's an incredible world of underwater life that very few people appreciate unless it happens to wash ashore in its dying and broken form. I'd love to take up scuba diving or go out on marine watching boats, but alas the hole in my eardrum keeps me from going underwater at any depth and I get terribly seasick. I probably should resign myself into simply saying, "Oooh, pretty seaweed."