Greeting the grunion...

[senoritafish]

A co-worker in the San Diego area let us know about this project, and it sounds like fun; so I signed John and I up for a workshop to be "Grunion Greeters."

http://www.grunion.org

Basically, it's just going down to the beach during a spring tide (highest high tide - occurs at the full and dark of the moon) at night, watching grunion washing up on the beach to lay their eggs in the sand, and collecting some basic data about them, which hopefully will eventually be used in a biomass assessment. My boss and co-worker have been involved with it for several years - why didn't they tell us sooner?

Today is the last day to RSVP for the Cabrillo Aquarium workshop on Friday at 8 pm (San Pedro), if anyone here in my area is interested; all the workshops are here. Some of them have already happened though.

What the heck is a grunion, you ask? Some people think they're the Southern California version of a snipe hunt, but they do actually exist. So do snipe, for that matter...

http://arachnid.pepperdine.edu/grunion/media/slideshow.htm

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mrd/grnindx3.html

Comments

[puddinhed.livejournal.com]

I first heard of grunion in one of my favorite childhood movies, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead.

[poetpaladin.livejournal.com]

Would you do me a BIG favor and tell me if/when you are gonna go see grunion?

I have never never never ever been on a grunion run!

I might wanna take some to eat but I promise I won't be too greedy!!

[archaeomom8.livejournal.com]

Sometimes your posts make me seriously miss living at the beach! ;-)

[senoritafish.livejournal.com]

Hey, we're signed up to go this weekend, Friday and Saturday, possibly Sunday, if you'd like to tag along. Unfortunately, you won't be able to take any as April/May are closed season for grunion. Email me if you'd like to.

We'll be signing up for some later runs as well - the study period is every two weeks until Jun. 14, however, later on the tides start running into weekdays.

[senoritafish.livejournal.com]

Signed up to go this weekend, I'll have to see if I can post some pictures... ;)