Are the grunion running this year?
On Friday night, my sister, a friend, and myself drove down to Seal Beach and sat at the south side of the pier waiting for the grunion to run. From 11:30 pm to 1:30 am we sat and waited for these mysterious little fishies to show up. Alas we saw none.
My little sister a few years past had seen a great grunion run and tells the stories of the glittery fishes on the sand over and over to the delight of Chinese mothers. Hence we started our hunt for grunion by starting out at Big 5 Sporting Goods to obtain a one day fishing license. This fishing license allows you to touch and interact with the grunion in the open season June and onward.
The debate of whether to go or not go was long and drawn out. First the criteria was to find this mysterious beach in Palos Verdes where the grunion were discovered that summer many years before. However we couldn’t find it as it was a private beach and the friend who lived there was unreachable. Next I thought well I work for Yahoo! and my job involves lots of bloggers, let’s see if these bloggers can help me. I searched blogs using Yahoo! and technorati. This method was unsuccessful as people only said they went to a beach and saw grunion. Nobody stated which beach and where on that beach. Last chance for us and grunion, we said well if we call the lifeguards they might be able to tell us. So I called and called a bunch of lifeguard stations at various California beaches until we realized that we were hitting up the same lifeguard station over and over again. (Beach and station numbers can be found through USC sea grant’s beach listings.) The lifeguards said sure grunion run here, but we’ve never seen them. One nice lifeguard at the Seal Beach station said try the south side of the pier people have spotted them there before. He even told us to park near the 10th street parking lot.
Well we tried and had a great time in the warm salty air waiting for the elusive grunion to come up upon the shore to grace us with their presence. Instead we ran around the beach at midnight like little children building sand castles and doing cartwheels.
Not a bad use of $11.30 and 3 hours.
2 comments August 14th, 2006
