Mission Beach

This guide to Mission Beach in San Diego follows the grunion, small silver fish that ride the tide onto this narrow sandbar in full view of moonlit crowds to spawn, twice a month around the full and new moon. It describes the mating itself, a female burying her tail in the sand while a male, sometimes several, curls around her, and the ten days the buried eggs then wait underground. You'll hear why marine biologists who have studied this ritual for decades still cannot answer the most basic question about where these fish spend the rest of their lives. Come after dark during a spring run and watch the sand itself start to shiver.