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?

wordless Wednesday

squid boats ~ 05/15/11 ~ at home

squid boats

I'm not sure why, but I've felt compelled to post pictures of the squid boats we see from home. Ha! They're much easier to photograph than whale spouts and tails. I believe the squid season starts around April 1. It's unusual to see this many boats out during the day. Typically, the boats go out late in the afternoon and have bright lights on all night long. It used to bother us for sleeping. Sometimes one or two will camp out on the water during the early part of the day where you see the boats above. I find it interesting that the fellas take Friday and Saturday nights off.

ps 10/25/13 - As an example of how bright those lights are, check out a satellite image of squid boats in the Atlantic Ocean off South America.

got squid?

Chennai, India - neighborhood market
November 8, 2006

I've been looking into market squid, squid boats, and local customs of fishing, because I have a series of additional squid boat pics to post on Nature ID. Then I remembered I had these pics from India. I saw boats on the beach, but I don't know if they use nets and lights like we do here. These guys were such hams for the camera. Notice the guard-looking fellows in the back? Hmm? Now, I'm curious to know how they got their squid...

ps 06/14/11 - I just discovered I never got around to posting the additional boat pics from Monterey Bay. Will try to get to that at some point.

squid boats

It's like Christmas lights on the bay in May. We have never seen so many boats out on the water in the 4 years we've lived here. Okay, maybe I was wrong in thinking they came out only during the moon cycles. Did some kind of fishing season open up? I still need to look into this.

ps 05/07/10 - They were still out there last night, but not quite so many. Tonight there aren't any. Do squidermen take the weekend off? Don't know what else to call them 'cause they're not catching fish per se.

grunion greeting, 2010 #1

unofficial grunion greeting
full moon cycle, 10:30-11:05pm, partly cloudy skies

I am out of my mind! After 8 hours of driving back home, through rain, snow, and hail, I barely finished unpacking when I asked my sniffly hubby (he has a cold in a major way and I haven't seen him in 12 days) if he was up for going grunion greeting. It's not even a Doc Martin-approved outing; she thinks it's too early and too cold for our area this far north. I think she's given up on the Monterey area, but I haven't. I'm determined to report a W-3!!! (I'm thinking my hubby is extremely accommodating to my enthusiasm or is possibly, a teeny bit, interested in nature, too. Haha!)

Sure enough the lighted, squid boats were out in full force. I'm starting to figure their timing has much to do with the tide cycles, but I can't seem to find any confirmation of this online. We hoped to at least see Charlie, our night heron "friend" from last year. No such luck. And, no grunion. Phooey!

The tide was very high compared to any outings last year. It went up to the 2nd parking meter and in some areas right up to the beach house shown above. Despite all the cars on the commercial wharf, we only saw 2 people fishing. One had a huge flood light, powered by his truck, and was looking for striper. He was extremely grumpy, as I've now found most fishermen are.

Since it was windy and starting to rain, we headed home to a warm bed after only a little over half an hour.

ps - As usual, I'll probably edit this post once I look up an e-mail from Dr. Martin a couple months back, asking if anyone here felt a training workshop would be beneficial. Plus, I know y'all have missed my mysterious, fuzzy, nighttime lights pics!

pss 04/29/10 - I heard back from Dr. Martin after I made the first comment below. Here's what she said, "A minor correction, we did have a report even farther north than San Francisco last year, in Tomales Bay. Small, but present. As far as we know they are gone from San Francisco Bay but I'll keep checking from time to time."

And, yes, I officially reported our non-finding to grunion.org. Apparently, not seeing any grunion is acceptable research data. Can you believe they have 560 volunteers this year?!?

For quick links to active grunion nights, versus numerous verbose posts of my fuzzy nighttime pics of lights, click May 24, 2009 and June 7, 2009. You'll notice in my pics that most people have nappy-noggin' warmers and heavy coats in June! Our experience last year was NOT like what they show on t.v. from SoCal, but I'll take it just the same and still hold out hope we'll witness something spectacular. For a great horror B-flick of grunion, check out James Cameron's Piranha II: The Spawning.

squid boat

Wait! Is it the new moon? I think I'm 'bout ready for grunion greeting. We see these massive boats in the Monterey Bay every spring, most notably for their extremely bright lights in the middle of the night - which would be beautiful and appreciated if they didn't light up our bedroom all night long. This is the first sighting since last year. I've looked with binoculars and those gulls are hovering around the boats past midnight, too. I'm searching online into this regular occurrence in our area, but I'm finding it difficult to find solid information. While we can see these boats plainly from home, this pic was taken between Cannery Row and the Plaza Hotel.

ps 04/17/10 - The boats were out Wednesday night and Thursday night. No sign of them Friday night.

grunion greeting, 2009 #11

grunion greeting
full moon cycle (11:25pm -12:55am), partially cloudy skies

Night #2 of the July full moon cycle and we didn't see any grunion. We initially said we might not do the last-minute request by Dr. Martin to also watch Thursday night, particularly if we didn't see any grunion the first 2 nights... but I caved in and confirmed we'd do it out of a desire to report a W-3, especially considering the reports of seeing a big run on the full moon of July 2007. I think I'm starting to get obsessive about grunion. My guess is that we're the only grunion greeters in our area who have been out every single night of the study - it's giving us a project to entertain ourselves this summer and something to complain about when we're tired. Hahaha. While we've been rewarded by seeing some grunion, we still have yet to witness a major run. Phooey!

We arrived at Del Monte Beach at 11:10pm. There were 10 people already on the beach with their pants pulled up and looking for grunion with flashlights in the water. They said they arrived at 10:45pm and immediately spotted 6 grunion and a couple more afterwards. Their dog was tied up and was howling to join the fun. This group left around 11:45pm which thankfully left us to watch the waves by ourselves (see first pic above) . If there's not going to be any grunion, I do appreciate the soothing, meditative sounds of the waves. There was also a squid boat that anchored not too far from the end of the commercial wharf.

The flock of gulls was there again (see second pic). They appeared to be waiting for something. Please note, we haven't seen gulls on the beach at all this entire season except for yesterday's greeting night.

One lady from the group of 10 said she had been present the night before during the second hour. She seems like an enthusiastic grunion watcher and I wondered why she wasn't involved in the research project. Unfortunately, I was too sleepy to think quickly enough to give her the grunion volunteer info - I'm thinking I need to be grunion greeter recruiter, b/c my hubby and I can't continue this late-night program forever. A friend of hers told her he saw a bunch of grunion on Carmel Beach the previous night (July 7), but she wasn't sure if he was pulling her leg or not. She planned on heading to Carmel on Thursday night.

Our friendly Monterey City guy also stopped by to open up the bathrooms for us. He claimed he saw a ton of grunion the previous night (July 7) at 4:30am and that the gulls were going crazy. We figured that would be about at low tide, which didn't make much sense to us. This is the same fellow who claimed his third cousin sold a Spanish gold coin found on the beach for $36K. I don't know whether to believe him or not.

The high tide seemed particularly low again. Occasionally, some waves made it up to the 5th parking meter, but for the most part they hovered around the 7-9th meters. We left at 12:45 very disappointed.

grunion greeting, 2009 #2

grunion (smelt?), western grebe, black-crowned night heron
full moon cycle (11:25pm - 1:05am), clear skies

Love my high quality pics?!? We went out grunion greeting on Del Monte Beach again. Although there are other grunion beaches on the Monterey area list, Del Monte is convenient for us. The experience was quite a change from the night before with the group from the workshop. Besides someone sleeping in the sand, we were the only people on the beach!

The only grunion (or smelt?) we saw for sure was a dead one washed up ashore 2 feet away from a dead grebe. Fortunately, a sprightly night heron was hunting nearby to entertain us while we enjoyed the romantic fuller moon and soothing sounds of the waves. It was facing away from the water and we took an immediate kindred liking to it as humans and bird alike were running back and forth along the berm to avoid the larger waves. There was also a floating bird, possibly a grebe, not too far out in the water that was diving. A lighted squid boat anchored and stayed straight out from the cement structure almost the entire watch period. From about May 5-12, squid boats were out on the bay well into the daylight hours - normally we only see them at night.

Since it was so dark, the dead bird could have been a Clark's grebe. I had no idea what kind of bird it was until I got home to look it up. I didn't know to check if it had white under its eyes (Clark's) or black under its eyes (western) to distinguish between the 2 species. Plus, we're not sure how to tell the difference between a dead grunion and a dead smelt.

This night heron managed to gulp down one silvery, skinny fish, which we later believed to be a grunion. After about an hour and a half, the night heron flew away inland with a companion. We decided if it knew to go, so should we.

May 24 is the next scheduled grunion watch; we'll be there.