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

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

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.

habitat ~ 05/28/13 ~ Monterey Municipal Beach

Monterey Municipal Beach
(often mistaken for Del Monte Beach or Monterey State Beach)

May 28, 2013

Considering our two incredible grunion greeting nights, Dr. Karen Martin wanted to make sure our City's beach maintenance crew knew not to groom where the grunion eggs are safely nestled in the moist sand of the highest tide line.  Yeah, you read that right, as in beach grooming.  I had to chuckle a little bit, because this is Monterey and we're a little more casual about such things. Karen hails from Malibu, where the likes of David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson run around flashing toned and tanned bodies for Hollywood cameras. With all that flashiness down in SoCal, apparently the beaches also get the star spa treatment... which is bad news for grunion eggs.  After a few phone calls and e-mails, I think we're set in making sure our local grunion eggs are not disturbed until they hatch when the next highest tides return with the new moon.

Even with the assurances from City Parks Division and City Public Works, I was a little worried children would have dug huge forts in the sand during the warm weather holiday as I've seen them so often do, so I stopped by the Municipal Beach before lunch to see the beach conditions for myself. Phew! It looks like nothing untoward has happened to the hot spot of hidden grunion eggs. I could be wrong, but I think the only time our crew grooms the beach is before the winter storms and they use a bulldozer to create a massive sand barricade in front of the Rec Trail.

Other than 2 blog posts on crow and sea lettuce and godwit, willet, gull, my numerous photos of Monterey Municipal Beach are dark, fuzzy, and often moonlit from many nights of grunion greeting. So, here are a few pics taken in the daylight for my habitats documentation.  I added additional names in the ID above, because this beach is often mistaken for the others.  In fact, I called this Del Monte Beach in most of my older grunion greeting posts.  Nope.  It's all really a continuous stretch of exposed sand curving northeast, but with very different slope and wave conditions and managed by different agencies. We tried grunion greeting at Monterey State Beach once, but it was extremely dangerous, especially in the dark.

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.

grunion greeting, 2011 #3

grunion greeting
new moon, 10:45-11:30, clear skies

This was the last of our grunion greeting for the year. Admittedly, we didn't put much effort into it after only seeing 2 grunion in the past 2 years and 9 visits. In 2009, we went out a total of 15 times and were marginally successful in finding grunion. That year we didn't mind the sleep deprivation that comes from late nights on the beach, often as late as 1:00 in the morning. As our schedules have become increasingly demanding, it's been harder and harder to keep the enthusiasm going. I've submitted all my findings... er, non-findings to Dr. Karen Martin's grunion greeting study at Pepperdine University.

Despite the lack of grunion sighting success, I'm glad we participated in the study. It got us out on the beach on a regular basis, something we never would have done, let alone at night. We've been able to notice the subtle changes on and around the beach, such as the flattening out of the beach surface itself and the addition of the neon blue lights to the pub building at the commercial wharf this year. I wondered if the bright lights affected the grunion runs on this particular beach as it is so bright and reflects in the water right where we used to spot grunion.

Above is the cement structure that I've mentioned so often in previous posts. It was our marker for where to turn around on the beach and head back to the commercial wharf. I didn't like hanging around, because people were often sleeping on the beach right there in the total darkness.

giant kelp with eel-grass and surf-grass
Macrocystis pyrifera with Zostera pacifica and Phyllospadix sp.
Zosteraceae

I had never heard the term wrack before participating in this study. Thankfully we didn't have to ID it to submit reports. We only had to make a general estimation of how much was present, if at all. Generally there was very little wrack during grunion greeting nights, which I think had to do with the calm summer waves. As a side note, many sites still recognize eelgrass as all belonging to Zostera marina, which technically has skinny leaf blades of only 1.5-12mm wide, whereas Z. pacifica has wider leaf blades 12-18.5mm.

monkeyface-eel
Cebidichthys violaceus

I think the most fun was having a chance to talk with local fishermen who we wouldn't normally meet. One fisherman told me the fish was a "monkey-faced spine fish." Thanks to the power of google I found the ID. It's a prickleback, not an eel, so spine fish is a good descriptor. There's something really fascinating about how information is passed from one fisherman to another in a verbal way complete with stories (and exaggerations). There's a whole subculture to fishing. Names and such are not always correct, but when it comes down to it, all that really matters is, "Is it good to eat?" I suggested to Karen that she might consider recruiting the local fisherman for watching grunion in Monterey. They're out late at night anyways. Who knows, we may or may not go grunion greeting next year.

ps - While searching for monkeyfaces online, I found this wacky, zany fishing music blog, the kind of gotta-love-people-who-are-real-yo: The Monkeyface News.

grunion greeting, 2011 #2

grunion greeting
full moon, 10:23-11:30, clear skies

No grunion. Surprise, surprise. Yet, we're still going out to the beach past our bedtime to check. Interesting to note, the beach has changed its horizontal shape from years past; it's much flatter now and the high tide easily reaches the rental building. I was sure the June full moon would bring those little "romantic" fish up to the beach. I even convinced a couple friends to join us. While she's never seen a grunion before, he's very familiar with grunion runs from being a beach kid in SoCal. So, this was a bit of a disappointment. We had a good time anyways, catching up, enjoying the beach by the light of the full moon, and finding all kinds of things... including the skull above. At first I thought it might be a sea otter skull. After checking online, I think it might be a house cat skull based on the postorbital bar and the teeth. I posted 2 additional pictures on Flickr, here and here. What do you think?

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 #6

grunion greeting
full moon cycle, 10:35-12:30, overcast skies

Yeah, I know, I said we weren't going to do this again... but Dr. Martin let us know she was going to be in town and checking a couple beaches along Monterey Bay. I didn't commit to going out. It's been an extremely busy several weeks for us, and yet we wanted to see grunion this year.

We did. Count em'... 2. I'm okay with that.

Andy and I stood by our usual spot, while our cohorts walked down the beach. Karen called us over. Diane and her friend are reporting 30. I was playing with Karen's night scope (very cool toy) and didn't take any pictures of grunion for this blog. Here's a picture from last year that about sums up our experience of volunteering.

However, I did get a much better photo of that crab we saw last year on June 8. I've been looking for an ID and have been unsuccessful. I believe it is a type of shore crab. Can you ID?

ps 10/07/10 - While searching through Stanford's Hopkins Marine SeaNet site, I came upon the graceful rock crab (Metacarcinus gracilis, aka Cancer gracilis). Woohoo! Thanks to Steve at Blue Jay Barrens (link has been removed as he is no longer blogging), I now have a book that keys out this crab, but I had the preconceived notion that Cancer crabs were much, much larger and didn't believe the key. Of course, it's always easier to double-check keys once you know the answer.

grunion greeting, 2010 #5

grunion greeting
full moon cycle, 10:45-12:00am, overcast skies

Sorry to say, this may have been our last hurrah to look for the locally elusive Leuresthes tenuis. We haven't seen any this year at all and it's beyond discouraging. To be fair, unlike last year, we're not going out 1/2 hour before high tide for 2-3 nights in a row. I was counting on the June full moon to deliver a grunion run, but no such luck.

Since we were asked to stay out to 1:00am, we took a nap. When my alarm went off, I woke up confused wondering who'd be calling us so late. Then I heard a mumble from the other side of the pillows, "I don't want to go... but if you insist, I can be convinced." Gotta love the man!

When we arrived there were a couple bonfires and 16-25 people all along the beach, many in the water with flashlights. We assumed it was Dr. G's entourage, but instead the group turned out to be a couple families of local fishermen. I talked with some of them and they were very friendly. Some of the wives were hula dancers for a beach party at Adventures by the Sea back in 2007 when they saw a big grunion run (it amazes me how all these local stories refer to that particular summer). This is the first year they decided to try collecting grunion. Usually, they're on the pier at night using lines for smelt and mackerel. Apparently, they came out the 2 nights after the last new moon (6/13 & 6/14). They claim they saw a ton of grunion by flashlight in the shallow waters that Sunday night and nothing on Monday night. When I asked if they noticed any laying eggs in the sand, they said no. Andy pointed out that he wasn't sure if what they saw were really grunion since there are several kinds of small silvery fish.

We walked down to the cement structure and by the time we got back to the pier most of the group had left. There were 2 young sea lions near the pier and 3 seagulls in the usual spot 100 yards out on the berm. By 11:30 the MBARI fellow and a couple interns from St. Louis arrived. They, too, walked down the beach. I wasn't feeling all that well, so we left early figuring if any grunion showed up George would report it.

We may not continue with this program given the extra effort it takes to drag ourselves out of bed to get to the beach... or to make it through the next day. I may never get a chance to report a W-3 and I even had the 1-800 number hotline programmed on my cell. Phooey!

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.

grunion greeting, 2010 #3

Carmel Beach City Park
full moon cycle, 10:45-11:35pm, clear skies

To save you from having to read all this, we didn't see any grunion. No big surprise. This is a new grunion greeting beach for us; we figured researcher Liz and possibly Diane had Del Monte covered for the night. We looked for eggs here with Dr. Martin last year at the end of the northerly season (August, not July like in SoCal).

As you can tell by the first picture, there are almost no lights on the beach compared to Del Monte. The moon was all we had to help us look for grunion. Yep, we have a headlamp, but it's better to keep the eyes adjusted to the low lighting. It's funny how wrack suddenly becomes a potential animal in the dark. Since this is located around the peninsula on the ocean side, the waves are a little bigger and the air is saltier, not to mention we were discombobulated from the different location of the moon in relation to the beach. Interestingly enough, the high tide is listed as occurring 3 minutes earlier than at Del Monte.

Like I did with Seaside Beach last year, I'm including a picture of the warning signs. A tourist drowned here earlier this year in February from the sneaky rip currents. Fortunately, the waves were not out of control this night. I'm unwilling to check Carmel Beach during the pitch black of a new moon night.

Some people had a bonfire down the beach and were lighting off fireworks. Needless to say it was entertaining to watch while we were being skunked by the grunion. I don't think Monterey is on the official grunion greeting list this year. Indeed, last year was the first year for the program in our area. All my times listed above, now without parenthesis, show when we were out, versus previously posted times. As per Karen's request, I am still reporting my non-findings to the research program.

Oh! We did stop by Del Monte on our way home for about 15 minutes. No grunion and only a small group of high school girls taking pictures of each other. Guess it was too late to catch Liz, even though we made it home by midnight.

grunion greeting, 2010 #2

grunion greeting
full moon cycle, 10:10-11:15pm, clear skies

Yep, it's that time again... for extra-fuzzy late-night pics from me. To cut to the chase, no grunion. High tide was at 10:22pm with a relatively big 6.03 feet.

When we arrived, we recognized Dr. G and his cohorts right away. You can make out the coolers for collecting on the right in the first picture. BUT, it's closed season here until the end of May! However, down on the beach we met a lovely young woman named Liz. She's the researcher from SUNY and made it clear, without any questions from me, that she had a permit to collect for research purposes. I asked why someone all the way from New York would be studying a fish found only along California's coast. Her lab also studies Atlantic silverside (Menidia menidia) and there's apparently a similar behavioral relationship of spawning at high tide, like with grunion (Leuresthes tenuis).

We also greeted Diane (our favorite fellow grunion greeter from last year), Bonnie (also from last year), and Sheryl (a newbie). It was nice to catch up with them. Diane and Bonnie had just come from a local Cetacean Society meeting where they learned about the endangered status of vaquita, the world's smallest known cetacean. Diane was kind enough to let us know she saw our ol' night heron friend "Charlie" before Dr. G's crowd arrived.

We saw two young sea lions on the beach. We didn't observe any on the beach last year. As per our usual get-away-from-the-crowd desire, we walked down the beach to the cement structure. Even if we don't see grunion, it's nice to get out to enjoy the soothing waves on a full moon.

For videos that show much better than I've been able, since we keep getting skunked in Monterey, check out YouTube's posts: La Jolla Grunion Run 2008 (I like this mainly for the disco music accompaniment) and Grunion run at Doheny Beach (actually quite informative for a news clip).