San Diego Hatches Plan to Protect Grunion Spawning Sites at Beaches

Beaches are serious stuff here, both for the sun-drenched lifestyle of locals and for the millions of tourists who keep the economy afloat.

“Beaches are at the core of San Diego’s identity,” said Councilman Scott Peters.

For more than three decades, San Diego has had an aggressive program of daily raking, cleaning and grooming its 17 miles of beaches, particularly the most popular: Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, Mission Beach and La Jolla.

Other cities along the Southern California coast may care for their beaches, but none more extensively or obsessively than San Diego. Key to its cleanup efforts is the daily removal of copious amounts of rubbery greenish-brown kelp that floats ashore.

But now questions are being raised about whether the mechanized raking has disturbed the shorefront ecology, particularly affecting those silvery fish called grunion (Leuresthes tenuis) that make periodic spawning runs on to the beach.

Grunion lay eggs in and around the kelp; critics claim that raking the beach kills some egg masses and leaves others without protection from the tides.

After several citizen complaints--particularly from Pat Gallagher, 72, a veteran diver and beach activist--the city’s Park and Recreation Department in May imposed a moratorium on the raking of kelp until mid-September, the traditional end of grunion spawning season.

Meanwhile, a blue-ribbon committee, with members including scientists from UC San Diego and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has been asked to determine whether the raking is hurting the grunion and other creatures.

“The problem is that nobody knows for sure,” said Ted Medina, head of the coastal parks division of the Park and Recreation Department. “Everybody has anecdotes, but nobody has done a count of the grunion.”

This week, as spawning grunion flop and slither on the beach in response to a nighttime full-moon high tide, committee members will be there to gather some of the first grunion data of its kind.

Gallagher, whose complaints went unheeded for decades, thinks she knows the answer.

“When I was a kid, you could stand on the beach under the moonlight and see nothing but grunion as far south and north as you could see,” Gallagher said. “Now it’s pitiful. A sensible person knows we’ve virtually destroyed the grunion.”

Although the grunion spawn on several beaches in Southern California, only in San Diego has the combination of kelp, fish and beach maintenance turned into a political issue. One reason may be that the raking here is especially vigorous.

Each year the city rakes up more than 20,000 cubic yards of kelp from its beaches and carts it to Fiesta Island to dry. Just how many grunion eggs may be destroyed in the process is unknown.

What is known, however, is that left undisturbed, kelp will deteriorate and begin to stink and draw flies. Smelly and fly-ridden beaches are a tourist turnoff.

Though the visitors’ bureau has yet to record anyone canceling a San Diego vacation because of the kelp buildup, visitors have been quick to notice that something is different this year.

“We’ve been coming to San Diego for 20 years, and I’ve never seen it or smelled it like this,” said Phyllis Hale of Phoenix, supervising her two children at popular South Mission Beach. “This isn’t the San Diego we love.”

Park and Recreation Department workers continue to clean litter and dead birds and other flotsam from the beaches. But removing kelp below the mean high-tide line has been put in abeyance.

The city committee has invited Jenny Dugan, a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara, to join its kelp-raking study. Since 1996, Dugan has been studying the effect of beach grooming in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

Her preliminary studies show that grooming significantly decreases the population of insects and crustaceans and of shore birds, such as the snowy plover, that lay their eggs on shore. Her working thesis is that the same is true for the grunion of San Diego.

“I think the effect is probably very large because of the level of grooming,” Dugan said. “I’m not here to say that you shouldn’t groom the beaches, just that you should know the impact.”

Beaches are a contentious political issue in San Diego and, so far, no consensus has formed on the City Council regarding kelp.

Councilman Byron Wear wants to resume raking except for those few days during a run. “We must be doing something right,” he said. “The grunion keep coming.”

But a colleague has suggested stopping the raking altogether and letting the tide carry away the kelp. “Maybe we should trust Mother Nature, rather than bulldozers,” said Councilwoman Donna Frye.

Medina of the coastal parks division ordered the raking halted after the kelp-grunion issue was discussed at a council meeting.

“Before that, grunion were not on my radar,” Medina said. “Now they are, although in unknown numbers.”