Sept. 17 (UPI) — A visitor to a Southern California beach captured video of an encounter with a rare visitor to the state: a highly venomous yellow-bellied sea snake.
Jackie Aguilar said she and her family were visiting the beach Friday night in Crystal Cove, Orange County, when they spotted the snake on the shore.
Aguilar captured video of the snake and determined it was a yellow-bellied sea snake. Marine naturalist Chad Steffen agreed with her assessment.
“They are very venomous, but they are also very clumsy and sluggish out of water,” Steffen told CBS Los Angeles. “They are not inclined to bite. They aren’t aggressive.”
Yellow-bellied sea snakes don’t generally venture further north than Baja California in Mexico. The snake spotted by Aguilar is the first to be documented in Orange County since 2018, and the sixth of its species to visit California since 1972.
Steffen said the warm waters resulting from El Niño are causing several species to wander further north than their usual range.
Oceanographers previously warned in late July and early August that El Niño could bring species including yellow-bellied sea snakes and hammerhead sharks to California waters.
“We expect to see all kinds of weird tropical things come up with this warm water,” Douglas McCauley, director of the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told USA Today.
Aguilar said the snake in her video successfully made its way back into the water and swam away. She said she will be staying out of the water for the time being.