Grunion Greeting again...

[senoritafish]

Spawning grunion, Shaw's Cove, Laguna Beach - If you look at the large version of this picture, there are at least seven female grunion laying their eggs. They're the one where you can only see their heads sticking out of the sand. Grunion live only in California and Mexico, and spawn on the beaches during the highest tides of month from March through September, April and May being closed season to taking them and the peak spawning time.

runsamuck and I are volunteering for the Grunion Greeters program for the second year. This is a study being run by researchers at Pepperdine University, to try and get a handle on just how much grunion is out there - it's not really known. They've already done a great job educating the city and county folks who groom the beaches in not raking the sand below a certain point on the beach face, lest they destroy all of the incubating grunion eggs.




Crescent Bay, Laguna Beach

These two ladies were obviously looking for grunion and we first thought they were other greeters. However, we noticed they were using flashlights, and when we approached and began talking to them, we found they were sisters from Tennessee and New York, in town for a reunion. They didn't know that lots of lights on the beach could scare off the "scout" fish and keep the rest of the grunion from spawning there. They were a little disappointed to not see any, but then runsamuck told us they were spawning farther up the beach, close to the bluffs. So they were very excited to get to see grunion before they went home.

Comments

[aliki.livejournal.com]

That is SO COOL!

[senoritafish.livejournal.com]

Well, if you ever visit CA in the spring/summer during a full/new moon, you should check 'em out. It really is the neatest thing.

What's really fun is you can collect some of the eggs for a science demonstration; take them to your class, add some seawater, shake well, and viola, baby fish!

[aliki.livejournal.com]

I think I'll have to!

This sounds so cool.