Grunion Run

As a teenager, my friends would go to the beach for the grunion run, but I was never able to go. I didn't really know what it was, but since all my friends went, I felt really left out. When I was 19, I was living in Carlsbad and my roommates all went to the grunion run without me. Again, I felt left out! I had lived in San Diego my whole life and I was the only one who had never been to a grunion run.

Fortunately, I had just started dating Rex and he was game for anything I wanted to do. It was so awesome to finally have someone to go with me to everything. So I told him about the grunion run.

"What's a grunion run?" he asked. (He was not a native San Diegan.)

"Uh...good question."

What was a grunion run? Geez! I didn't even know! Maybe I'd never asked because I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn't know and was afraid people would laugh at me. This was before the internet was much of anything, and I couldn't just look up what it was. It was just announced in the paper when it was, not what it was.

"I think they are fish," I answered uncertainly.

That night, we went to Tamarack Beach because it was just down the road from me. What were we looking for anyway? I felt so stupid not knowing what I was doing! This was a popular thing to do, so I had expected other people to be there. Strangely, there wasn't a soul to be seen, so I couldn't even ask anyone. Maybe we were too late to see this grunion run thing, or maybe we were at the wrong beach for it.

Well, at least we could just relax and enjoy the ambiance of the beach. So we just sat on the shore, watching the waves. This was one of my favorite beaches because, every few years, you could watch the waves glowing neon blue at night from the bioluminescent algae (known as red tide because of an apparent reddish tinge during the day, which I never noticed).

Then we noticed there were tons of silvery shimmery things getting washed up. Ah-ha! Those little wiggly things were the grunion!

But what was this phenomenon all about? Why were they getting washed up on shore? We got up to take a closer look. The little fish were flopping around, wigging themselves into the sand.

Oh my gosh! Were they doing what I thought they were doing? Had I just asked this guy I barely knew to go to the beach to watch fish mate??? I was so embarrassed! I hoped I hadn't just given him the wrong message!

I don't even like fish. I think they smell bad and taste gross. I only wanted to go to a grunion run because I'd never done it before and everyone always said how fun it was. Oh my!

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Grunion are small fish, about 5-6 inches long that are unique to SoCal. During the summer months, they come out of the water completely to spawn and lay eggs in the sand before going back into the water. They only come out at high tide on nights with a new moon or full moon. During a grunion run, people run around catching these little slimy devils with their barehands, either for sport or for eating.