Betty Vandenburg, age 13, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for her question:
What is a grunion fish?
The grunion is a California performer, though not a movie star. He is a slim, silvery fish and on certain special nights of the year, he performs on the moonlit beaches. No other fish is quite like him and he can be found nowhere else in the whole wide world.
If you visit California, you may catch yourself a batch of grunion to fry for :;u.o:, supper. But you may do so only on a few special nights of the year. The local newss papers announce these grunion nights and also remind the people that no fishing equip¬ment of any kind is permitted to catch them. No grunion may be caught during April and May. These game laws are enforced to prevent people from catching all the grunion fishes in the world, leaving none for the future. The grunion season usually lasts from June to September, and grunion fishers are allowed to use only their bare hands for catching the slithery little fishes.
The silvery, six inch fishes are cousins of the jack smelts and the silversides, the mullets and other fish that people eat. Another of their relatives is the toothy baraacuda who eats people. Their adult lives are spent near the sandy Pacific beaches between Point Conception and Baja California. On grunion nights the people who live near these beaches desert their TVs and drive ins, their bowling alleys and even their hot dog stands. Off they go to the beaches, with only a batch of dry logs to kindle a campfire.
The grunion event occurs when there is a New Moon or a Full Moon, which are times of highest tides. As the night tide swells to its highest peak, swarms of silvery grunion are seen riding high on the waves towards the sandy beaches. Shortly before the high tide turns, the silvery multitudes plunge forward and leave themselves stranded on the sand. Then the busy time begins.
Each female grunion wriggles her tail to dig a hole in the wet sand. When about a third of her body is below deck, she deposits a batch of small, salmon colored eggs in the hole. Meantime, several male grunion are wriggling and writhing close around her. When the eggs are laid, the males cover them with deposits of sperm cells. Then the parent fishes flop and flounder back to the sea and swim out into the deep water. The male and female egg cells become fertilized and stay buried in the sand above the level of the tides. Two weeks later, they will be swamped by another one of those high high tides. The eggs are washed out of the sand, pop open and out come baby grunion. The frisky, quarter inch infants immediately go to the water and swim out to join their relatives.
A fish out of water is about the most helpless fellow in the world. And the grunion fishes leave the sea for a few minutes to lay their eggs. Sometimes they land in such large numbers that people cannot walk on the beach without stepping on them. The busy, helpless creatures are easy to grab with the bare hands. In a few minutes, you can catch enough to fill the frying pan, already heated on the campfire logs. They have a tasty flavor but there is not much meat on just one grunion. Besides, he has a full quota of spiky fish bones.