Special Local Fish

IMG_2242Guest post by Noah.

A shake. A crack. A new life. Recently in science, we were studying grunion, a special fish right here on the coast in San Diego. Grunion are the only fish that lay eggs on land. Their full size is about as big as a one-dollar bill. Mrs. Candelaria showed us two fully grown (and dead) grunion. They were really cool, eel-like fish. Then we got the opportunity to hatch some of the grunion eggs. First, we split into groups and each group got a chance to look at some live baby grunion to see what we were looking for. Then, our group got a tub of grunion eggs and each table member got a chance to shake the tub to try to hatch one. It was very exciting watching the eggs swish across the water’s surface! Then, suddenly, when we looked in the tub one tiny little grunion was swimming inside! Then a few minutes later there were three in the tub… Some groups had as many as five. In my opinion, this was one of the best science labs ever and I would love to do it again!

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Side note: Grunion are found only along the coast of southern California and northern Baja and are the only fish who come out of the water to lay their eggs on the wet sand.

For more information, check out websites like this one:
http://sandiego.about.com/od/outdoorrecreation/a/grunions.htm