Native American tribes once celebrated the yearly return of the grunion when they came to shore to spawn every spring, with festivals and picnics to “call in” the six-inch long, silver blue fish native to Southern California.
Grunion are the only fish that come completely out of the water to spawn; the females lodge themselves, tail first, into the sand, mate, lay eggs and swim back to sea. The eggs remain in the sand for two weeks until they hatch, and the new grunion then go to sea.
In the past century, watching grunion come ashore to spawn has become a Southern California tradition. The fish come onto the sand several days after a full or new moon, two hours after high tide, which often means in a window a couple hours long, ranging from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.
While there has been research done on the fish, little is known about its life outside of its spring spawning behavior. However, in 2002, a group of blue ribbon scientists, fish and wildlife agency experts, and residents became concerned that beach grooming practices in San Diego were destroying a large number of grunion eggs.
A study was conducted that supported their hypothesis and the group worked to get the city to change the way they cleaned the beach during spawning season, which lasts from late March through August, with a heavy concentration in April and May.
The work of the group led to the creation of the Grunion Greeter project, a group of volunteers that monitors grunion behavior during spawning season, headed by Melissa Studer, project director, and Karen Martin, Ph.D., executive director of the project and a professor at Pepperdine University.
“[The project] is really interesting as a way of involving local people in management in seeing what’s happening on their own shore and their own coastline, and how humans impact it,” Martin said.
Since 2002, the group has recruited and trained volunteers who monitor beaches from San Diego to San Francisco on key nights the grunion are predicted to run. Volunteers provide estimates of numbers of grunion, their behavior, and information on predators and poachers, if present.
“Our volunteers are a very eclectic and unique group. They are ready to go onto the beach in the middle of the night and look for fish that may or may not be there,” Studer said.
Because of the short window of time (1 to 2 hours a night) and a large area, many volunteers are needed to obtain accurate and necessary data.
“Only one person can see so far. We need a lot of people, in a lot of different places, looking at the same time,” Martin said.
The project would be impossible to execute with paid staff unless the program had a very large budget, she added. Hence, volunteers are essential to making it run smoothly.
Martin credits the Internet as having a dramatic impact on grunion research. It has allowed for instantaneous data submission from volunteers over a large area of space and has made the scheduling of hundreds of volunteers at beaches all along the Southern California coastline easier.
Robin Savoian has volunteered with the program since 2004 and said she always finds friends and family who have heard about grunion runs but had no idea what they were like or that an official group of volunteers monitors them.
“It gives the average person the opportunity to participate in scientific research,” said Savoian, who has encountered runs ranging from a few grunion to hundreds.
This year, there are 200 greeters registered, but both Studer and Martin predict roughly 400 will get involved during the season.
“It’s one of those things when people describe it, it doesn’t sound like much fun: ‘Would you like to stay up late and watch fish and get cold and probably get damp?'” said Tony Barton, a Malibu resident who has volunteered with the Greeter program since 2004. “[But] it’s a good way to give back and it’s fun to go down and do it.”
It’s hard to predict what beaches will see a large number of grunion, or which nights will be best for grunion watching. There is not necessarily a “best spot,” as it varies what beaches are heavily hit on different nights from year to year, but the fish tend to favor gently sloping, not too sandy beaches that aren’t noisy and that are dark, said Studer.
While more information has been obtained on the fish through the Greeter Project, the mystery surrounding grunion behavior, what nights they will run and what beaches will be most heavily hit with grunion, still remains. This is part of the charm that many volunteers cite as what brings them back to the program each year.
“[The program] brings people out to appreciate something they may not be aware of; they get to go to a beach late at night and experience a slice of natural history,” Studer said, who guides volunteers to “be patient, tuck some luck in your back pocket, but [remember] they’re wildlife.”