Grunion Run
Howard Hall

Grunion ©Howard Hall

The extreme northern end of the Sea of Cortez is one of the least hospitable places on Earth. Here the Gulf is surrounded by sparse desert scrub and sand dunes, a portion of which are often airborne. The wind drives the fine abrasive grains into everything - your hair, your ears, your cameras. Especially your cameras.

The endless sandy beaches here are shaped by the second largest tidal forces in the world. At high tide the water's edge rose to within a few feet of our sand filled sleeping bags and tents. At low tide the entire Gulf retreated almost beyond sight, dropping more than twenty feet and in some places receding a mile or more.

I sat on the isolated beach in a lawn chair reading a Joe Weber techno-thriller and drinking Tecate beer (careful not to stir up the inevitable sand in the bottom of the can) while I waited for the tide to begin coming in. My movie camera was sitting on its tripod gathering sand in its delicate mechanisms and corroding in the salt-saturated air.

Mark Conlin and Chip Matheson were down on the tidal flats bolting our time lapse camera to an abandon automobile tire rim. Chip turned the camera toward the water nearly a quarter mile away, turned it on, and waited for the satisfying click that indicated the camera was working. He then pushed the button on his watch to measure the time interval before the next click. The camera would take a single frame every twenty seconds. When played back at the standard motion picture rate of 24 frames per second, four hours would be condensed into thirty seconds. The time lapse footage would show the tide coming in from a great distance away and then covering the camera, all in a few seconds.

Chip and Mark walked up the gently sloping beach to our camp, occasionally looking over their shoulders at the time lapse camera - as if it might suddenly disappear. It's not easy for a cameraman to set up an expensive camera then leave it to be trundled by the incoming surf. My brother, Evan, passed Chip and Mark a couple soothing beers and we all sat down to watch the sun fall and the tide rise.

Morning passed into afternoon. The ice in our beer cooler had melted from frequent opening. Nuclear war had been averted at the last second by a phone call from a fictional prime minister of the Soviet Union to the fictional president of the United States. And the edge of the Sea of Cortez which had been nearly a half mile away at 9 a.m. was only three yards from our feet. My camera continued to rest unused on its tripod gathering salt and sand despite Mark's frequent motherings with a can of compressed air. I wanted it ready in case something happened. Nothing had happened all day.

Chip took another look at his tide chart and for the twentieth time proclaimed that today should be the day. The chart told us that on this, the seventeenth of April, three days after the new moon, and within an hour of high tide, the grunion should run. It was a scientific fact. It said so right there on the chart. How the grunion knew they were supposed to run today I couldn't imagine.

In California, grunion run only at night concealed by darkness from aerial predators. Most Californians who have held vigil on California beaches in the predawn hours would argue that the mythical grunion doesn't exist. Like the snipe, grunion seem to be the product of a cruel conspiracy to deprive innocent people of a good night's sleep. In the Sea of Cortez, millions of fish washing up on the beach to mate and lay eggs in broad daylight seemed even less likely. We were told that the coming of the grunion would be heralded by great flocks of pelicans diving into the surf and thousands of gulls anxiously wheeling overhead waiting for the feast. Instead, a half dozen pelicans sat on the beach a couple hundred yards away - sound asleep.

"Should be starting now", Mark said with no trace of conviction as his fifteen dollar Casio confidently beeped. No pelicans dived in the sand saturated surf. No gull squawked overhead. No schools of fish could be seen silhouetted in the back-lit waves. This was our second trip to the Northern Gulf to film grunion. The first trip turned out to be a snipe hunt. I was convinced this trip was going the same way. I was even beginning to feel foolish about putting grunion in the script at all. "Of course you didn't get 'em you dolt," my editors would say. "Everyone knows snipe and grunion don't really exist!"

"There!" Mark said pointing to the waves receding from a spit of sand down the beach. I looked and saw something wriggling in the soft sand. I grabbed the camera and ran down the beach. By the time I got there, hundreds of eight inch long fish were washing ashore. Grunion! I began working as fast as I could. Lock the camera off on the tripod. Wide shot. Tilt down for a medium shot. Turn the camera the other direction for another wide and another medium. Next, a series of close-ups.

In moments thousands of grunion were washing ashore. Their writhings made a sound like a small river rapid. I had to work fast. The run may last only minutes. I'd spent a lot of money on two expeditions to film this elusive animal and I may have only minutes to justify the expense. The two weeks spent to film grunion would, hopefully, result in a three minute sequence in my one hour natural history film about the Sea of Cortez. I looked down the beach for another angle and saw tens of thousands more coming ashore.

They came ashore quickly as the small waves surged up the beach. As a wave receded, females buried themselves tail first in the sand. Immediately, hordes of male grunion competed to wrap their bodies around the heads of the females as they laid their eggs several inches beneath the surface. As a female lay her eggs, she vibrated her head back and forth sending spray several feet into the air. The males' milt sank into the sand and saturated the eggs. In a few seconds, the next wave washed the female back to the sea and brought a dozen more to take her place.

The sun dropped close to the horizon washing the beach in the golden light of late afternoon. And still the grunion ran! Millions washed up on the beach forming a silver highway along the shoreline. I had already shot far too much film, but as the light continued to improve, I continued to shoot. I planted the camera on the wet sand and shot along the beach into the setting sun. Thousands of females with their heads sticking up out of the sand vibrated sending brilliant diamonds of back-lit droplets into the air (an often all over my camera and lens).

Chip was also shooting close-ups. He was trying to get ultra-close images of the female's face as she laid her eggs. This was a difficult job as the whole thing lasted only a few seconds leaving him little time to set up, focus and shoot. Then when he was set, the grunion would send showers of spray all over his lens and new camera. I occasionally got a brief chuckle out of his frequent cries of anguish. Mark and Evan ran back and forth up the long beach for fresh magazines as our cameras devoured film.

Frequently I looked for birds, hoping to capture images of the pelicans diving or gulls raiding the spawning masses of fish on the beach. But the birds were far from frenzied over the event. The pelicans sat contentedly on the surface or made half hearted and seldom successful grabs at fish from their sitting positions. A gull would occasionally grab a fish and carry it up the beach where the bird would often drop it and squawk over the prize warning others to stay away while another less boisterous gull would grab the fish and fly away. These were not hungry birds.

I held my last shot for thirty seconds as the sun descended below the horizon and grunion continued to frenzy in the foreground. Then I was done. I stood and stretched my cramped back muscles and watched the grunion in the fading light. How do they do it? From deep in the murky waters of the northern Gulf they determine when the spring tide cycle has peaked on the third day after new or full moon. They have no tide charts, no celestial calendar, no science. Yet somehow they know when their time has come. To the minute! No one has a clue as to what guides such precision.

As I walked up the beach toward camp, I would have enjoyed continuing my contemplation of the mysteries of the grunion. But I found that difficult. My sense of awe and wonder which so often follows witnessing a wondrous and mystical event deep within the ocean wilderness was quickly erased. The tidal currents had brought more than grunion to the high tide line. My thoughts were interrupted as I waded through amazing quantities of trash that littered the beach. The refuse of the Easter weekend remained washing back and forth in the Gulf after the beach partying Americans returned to their homes in California and Arizona. The natives too are not well known for their own cleanliness when leaving a Mexican beach camp. So it seems Americans who vacation on these beaches simply dump their trash on the beach and say "When in Rome..."

Further up the beach a party of campers were warming up for a long evening. Fireworks were being ignited and the concussions echoed across the Gulf driving flocks of birds into the air and away to more peaceful roosts. Rock music blared between explosions. A familiar roar emerged from the opposite end of the beach and I turned to watch a half dozen riders on their ubiquitous ATVs speeding along the shoreline. They ignorantly rode over the remaining grunion and their knobby tires threw the egg saturated sand high into the air. Any since of wonder I might have had was replaced by disgust.

When I got back to camp, I noticed that Carol Ball had used a rake to clean the sand of trash around our camp. By morning, the wind will have blown more trash into our camp, but for the moment the gesture raised my spirits.

Chip and Mark were munching Carol's chocolate chip cookies while they consulted tide charts under the light of a butane lantern. "It's about time someone went out and retrieved the time lapse camera", I suggested hoping for a volunteer.

"Yeah, we were just talking about that," Chip said holding out the chocolate smudged chart for me to look at. "According to the chart, the camera is still covered by eight feet of water!"

"Oh great," I said reaching into the cooler for a handful of beers. "So when's it going to be low enough to go get it?"

"May 2nd!" Chip said laughing. "We should've looked at these charts a little closer before we put the camera so far down the beach. The next series of high and low tides isn't for two weeks! Low tide is at midnight, but it's not going to be low enough. And from now on, the low tides just get higher".

I popped the top of the beer can, looked out to a sea covered by a vermilion sky and contemplated a midnight swim in zero visibility. Far out in the Gulf, Shrimp fishing boats were turning on their lights and lowering their trawl nets in preparation of a night's fishing. I could count nineteen of them from where I stood.