2 different sea turtles nest on California beaches for the first time
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
Two sea turtles have laid eggs on Southern California beaches, marking the first recorded natural nesting of any sea turtle species on the West Coast.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) verified that two different turtles are nesting on Orange County beaches. Lifeguards spotted one of the turtles, an olive ridley sea turtle, last week on Surfside Beach. A second turtle was seen near Huntington Beach. Both areas have been roped off to protect the nests, which typically incubate for 45 to 60 days.
Experts say warmer waters caused by El Niño are driving the turtles north.
“There’s extremely warm waters, much higher temperatures than would be normal for this time of year, and so it’s created these quasi-tropical habitats right off the California coast,” said Jeff Seminoff, the leader of the Marine Turtle Ecology and Assessment Program at the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center.
While sea turtles have occasionally been spotted off California when the water gets warm, they have never nested on the West Coast. Typically, olive ridley sea turtles lay around 100 eggs on average and can have up to three nests.
The nesting event has been described as unprecedented.
“In my nearly 40 years of working with sea turtles, it’s one of the most exciting and momentous occasions in my entire career,” Seminoff said. “Never have I thought there would be sea turtles nesting here. It’s an area where we have abundant green turtle populations living in our coastal waters, but to have turtles crawling onto our beaches is an entirely different situation.”
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