![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/260519-MarineHeatwave-29-BL_qed.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA widespread marine heat wave and brewing El Ni\u00f1o could further threaten California kelp, sea birds and marine ecosystems.<\/p>\n
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Visitors look at the Kelp Forest exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey on May 19, 2026, modeled after the kelp forests found along the Monterey Bay coast.\u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks pretty green down there,\u201d Giraldo Ospina said. \u201cWe try to keep all the water in the bag because that\u2019s where larvae settle into the brushes and that might be what\u2019s floating in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baby kelp need cold, nutrient rich water to mature into tall, strong adult stipes. Giraldo Ospina worries that a massive, ongoing marine heat wave<\/a>, which has already raised coastal waters by 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit<\/a>, could disrupt efforts to regrow kelp forests vital to the Monterey Bay ecosystem, depending on how warm it becomes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have seen kelp recovering, and we don\u2019t know if that trend is going to continue, if we continue to have these warm waters,\u201d Giraldo Ospina said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the seventh marine heat wave in seven years and could be amplified by a developing super El Ni\u00f1o<\/a>, which has the potential to raise sea surface temperatures even higher. This combined influence could disrupt ecosystems, harm or kill local marine life and attract other species north.<\/p>\n \u201cWith El Ni\u00f1o, the fear is that the kelp that persisted [past the marine heat wave] may now decline, and recovering kelp may not get a chance to get back to what they were before,\u201d Giraldo Ospina said.<\/p>\n \u2018More dead birds than living ones being found\u2019<\/p>\n Even a few degrees of warming can set an ecosystem out of whack and lead to the die-off of almost entire populations. As of May 20, the International Bird Rescue in Fairfield has treated 288 starving birds<\/a>, including brown pelicans, cormorants and common murres.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are the same birds people are reporting finding dead on beaches, especially in Southern California, but now in Northern California as well,\u201d said JD Bergeron, the group\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n Bergeron said one theory is that small schooling fish \u2014 favorite food for shore birds \u2014 are seeking colder water deeper in the ocean, beyond the birds\u2019 reach. So they do not have enough food to eat.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have had very regular concerns with brown pelican starvation events, but this one does feel a little bit different,\u201d Bergeron said. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a lot more dead birds than living ones being found.\u201d<\/p>\n A marine heat wave off the coast of California forms when southerly winds from a semi-permanent area of high pressure weaken between Hawaii and the state.<\/p>\n The winds normally help cool the top layer of the ocean through evaporation and by mixing it with deep, cold water. Without the wind, this thin top layer warms.<\/p>\n The current ocean warming began last May<\/a> near Eastern Asia and spread across the Pacific.<\/p>\n Some waters have had little break since mid-2025, with more than 200 days of elevated temperatures, according to researchers with Climate Central, who said human-caused climate change has significantly intensified the marine heat wave<\/a>.<\/p>\n Up to 45% of the ocean impacted \u201cis experiencing conditions that are at least six times more likely due to human-caused warming,\u201d Climate Central said.<\/p>\n Without climate change, they wrote, the heat wave\u2019s footprint would be 36% smaller.<\/p>\n How could El Ni\u00f1o make the marine heat wave worse?<\/p>\n An El Ni\u00f1o event can weaken winds and slow the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water, which could further intensify the marine heat wave. Without that strong mixing, warm water lingers at the surface, causing temperatures to spike.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the ingredients are there for a strong El Ni\u00f1o,\u201d said Tom Di Liberto, media director and climate scientist with Climate Central. \u201cIf you\u2019re making cookies, you\u2019ve already mixed the dough, but haven\u2019t baked them yet. We still have to wait to see if, in the summer months, these cookies get put in the oven to see if we have that strong El Ni\u00f1o form.\u201d<\/p>\n Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, said in a recent live-streamed office hours series that while El Ni\u00f1o is not directly related to the marine heat wave, \u201clater this year, it\u2019s actually quite likely that El Ni\u00f1o will reinforce this tropical warming.\u201d<\/p>\n Because El Ni\u00f1o refers to the \u201csloshing of water from the tropics to the Eastern Pacific it can and does impact sea surface temperatures along the California coast,\u201d said Alexander Gershunov, a research meteorologist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can even result in very different species of fish appearing off the coast here as the upwelling shuts down,\u201d Gershunov said.<\/p>\n \u2018They\u2019re in a really, really fragile state\u2019<\/p>\n If waters get even warmer, jellyfish, crabs, dolphins, sea turtles<\/a> and other species could move into colder habitats, said Dr. April Ridlon, director of science for the U.S. Ocean Conservation at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.<\/p>\n \u201cThe more we change the ecosystems, the more possible it is for those warm water species not just to arrive every once in a while and be a novelty and a news article, but for the fundamental composition of the ecosystems to change over time because the warm waters just don\u2019t stop,\u201d Ridlon said.<\/p>\n Ridlon said the current marine heat wave reminds her of \u201cThe Blob<\/a>,\u201d a warming event that ended about a decade ago. It decimated about 60% of kelp<\/a> along the Central Coast and nearly all of the kelp off the coast of Northern California.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/260519-MARINEHEATWAVE-14-BL-KQED.jpg\")
Conservation science director April Ridlon (left) and research scientist Dr. Anita Giraldo Ospina look at the Kelp Forest exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium on May 19, 2026. The exhibit is modeled after the kelp forests found along the Monterey Bay coast. (Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/260519-MARINEHEATWAVE-02-BL-KQED.jpg\")
Kelp floats in a kelp forest in Monterey Bay outside the Monterey Bay Aquarium on May 19, 2026. (Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/260519-MARINEHEATWAVE-27-BL-KQED.jpg\")
The Kelp Forest exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, on May 19, 2026, modeled after the kelp forests found along the Monterey Bay coast. (Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/260519-MarineHeatwave-25-BL_qed.jpg\")
Purple sea urchins and giant kelp sit in a touch pool in the Kelp Forest exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey on May 19, 2026. (Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/260519-MARINEHEATWAVE-10-BL-KQED.jpg\")
Kelp floats in a kelp forest in Monterey Bay outside the Monterey Bay Aquarium on May 19, 2026. (Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n