The Fish Bowl: The grunion are running! The grunion are running!

So, for an unusual date night Nate and I had a midnight rendezvous in search of the mystical grunion at which time we would practice catch and release, using our bare hands!

For those who do not know what grunion are please read:

California grunion are a species of marine fish found only along the coast of southern California and northern Baja California. They are justifiably famous for their unique spawning behavior. Grunion spawn completely out of the water and lay their eggs on many sandy beaches in California. Shortly after high tide, on specific nights, sections of these beaches sometimes are covered with thousands of grunion dancing about on the sand. The eggs remain buried in the sand throughout incubation, fully out of water for approximately 2 weeks. The larvae hatch when the eggs wash out by high waves during tides before the new and full moons.

There you have it, this spawning behavior and the observing of such, is known around these parts as a “grunion run”. Sexy , hugh? Yuk. For all the years we have lived here and even grown up here, neither one of us have actually gone to a grunion run (yippee, a first for both of us on something. Score!) it almost was like a lore… will you really see the grunion? We bundled up on a full moon (not needing to; weather was pretty great), packed a nice warm thermos of coffee with a… umm… a spice of something Irish added, our flashlight and headed off. Coronado was supposed to be a sure thing between the hours of 9:45pm and 11:45pm. Well, we did not see any grunion. I think that is why it becomes a lore or urban tale…although it is very real you need to be at the right beach at the right time. But it was awesome to be in the ocean air and we talked to some passer- by-er’s and fellow grunion runners and two of my work peeps came, too (Pat and Alan). Every now and then we would see a shimmer and get all excited, only to find the next wave roll in, leaving no spawning fish to photo. Boo. The grunion did not pick our beach that night. Needless to say… black night… no grunion… not a lot of pictures to show off our date, but it was still fun! Having a date night makes the blog, yes, it is that big of a deal for us boring folks... being out after dark, that was news worthy alone!

This man makes these sidewalk sand art pictures and messages- by using a broom! This was the only one to photo well, but he had an entire message written in cursive- it was impressive and fun to notice them in the dark!