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July 25, 2005
Grunion Run
Photo by Amy Bentley-Smith courtesy of Grunion Gazette
It's one of those things you always say you're going to do. It’s 10:00 at night and Jackie and I still hit traffic on the 710 heading to Long Beach. Of course, Steve Julian is nowhere on the radio to give us the update on how to get around it. We get past the jam and make it to the Vons on Ocean where we meet up with our guide and head to Belmont Shore. It’s about 11:00 at night and Long Beach is alive with nightlife. Driving east, we breeze by hundreds of people out on the street, walking, laughing, sitting in outdoor cafes. It really feels like summer tonight.
We pass Club Ripples and park next to the beach. Harry Saltzgaver, executive editor for the Grunion Gazette and the Downtown Gazette, has promised to take us on a grunion run. Despite being born and raised in Southern California, I have never been on a grunion run. Harry shares stories about Long Beach and how the city has reinvented itself in the past decade and a half after the flight of the navy and the continuing shrinkage of the aerospace industry. I think about moving here. And we wait. And wait. And wait.
Then they appear. As the break water fans across the sand and then pulls back to the sea, a teaming frenzy of fish is left behind jumping and slithering, trying to make a love connection. The female fish flip upwards, land with tail perpendicular to the sand and unbelievably drill their bodies into the wet ground. I find it hard to believe a fish is standing on it’s tail, and suddenly, after a few hops up and down, she’s up to her neck in sand. Driven males search for a female in her position and curl their silver bodies around her exposed neck to fertilize the eggs she has just laid. Then the next wave rolls out and pulls the fish back with it.
I resolve to do this every year.
Posted by Julia Posey at 9:11 AM
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Talk about dedication! Two radio producers, both young mothers with children who have yet to see their first birthday, travel across Los Angeles County late on a Thursday night to do a story about, of all things, a 6-inch-long fish.
Now that's public radio to its heart and soul.
P.S. It's Belmont Shore, not Belmont Shores. Locals are fussy about that.
Posted by: Harry Saltzgaver on July 26, 2005 8:05 AM
