Reminder to start planning your grunion viewings
It's January, and in Southern California, we're only a little over two months away from the first grunion run of the year. This means that you can start choosing the precise day you'll visit the beach to watch hundreds of thousands of fish have sex and lay eggs on the exposed sand!!
Grunions are little silver fish that breed on the beaches of California and Mexico. They will beach themselves, copulate, and lay eggs at night in massive, highly-visible drifts of squirming, writhing fish. And because their mating sprees are determined by the moon and tides, California publishes the exact dates of expected grunion runs online every year.
I have gone to see grunions on the beach several times. You can search online to find good beaches near your home - there will probably be plenty of posts about it on Reddit or articles written in local newspapers. Some beaches have much, much better grunion activity than others.
Here are some photos I took in 2023 at Cabrillo beach in San Pedro:
Grunion runs are truly bizarre, intense experiences and going to see one can be mindblowing. I saw my first grunion run as a middle schooler on a trip to San Diego and it was so mindblowing that I kind of put it aside mentally as "some weird fish fluke thing I saw". It wasn't until decades later that I realized these runs happen all the time, predictably, and that you can make an appointment to take your friends and family to see them.
You should do this!! It's incredible!!!