Thursday, November 5, 2026
A Blue-banded Goby was logged at Pacific Grove on iNaturalist, one of only 3 sightings of the fish in these waters in the past year. Most years it keeps to itself. On Wednesday it did not.
The surface, meanwhile, forgot how to behave like Monterey Bay. Wind at NDBC 46042 held under 5 kt for 22 hours from around midnight, a flat sheet on water that rarely offers one. Underneath it ran the biggest sea of the week, averaging 10.5 ft at NDBC 46042 against 4.5 ft on its gentlest day. The dominant period peaked at 16-second intervals, long and clean, energy from weather nobody here ever saw. Glass on top, freight trains below.
The goby is gone, or at least it is not posing for a second sighting on your schedule. The glass is gone too: the National Weather Service expects northerly winds to build to moderate or fresh and seas to stay moderate to rough through the weekend, which is the bay's usual manners coming back. That long swell has already spent itself on the rocks. It was Wednesday. This is Thursday. The water left without you.