Southern California just made conservation history. In mid-September, two olive ridley sea turtles crawled ashore on Orange County beaches and laid eggs — the first documented natural sea turtle nesting ever recorded on the U.S. West Coast. Researchers confirmed the nests came from two different turtles, one near Seal Beach on September 16 and another near the Huntington Beach Pier three days later.
These small sea turtles, which usually nest much farther south in Mexico and Central America, surprised everyone with their northern visit. When heavy surf threatened to wash the nests away, an interagency team of federal, state and local scientists carefully gathered roughly 200 eggs on September 25 and moved them to a climate-controlled room at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, where they are now being monitored through their 45-to-60-day incubation.
If the eggs hatch as hoped — likely around early November — the tiny turtles will be returned to the very beaches where their mothers laid them, to begin their journey into the Pacific. The Aquarium invites the public to celebrate this hopeful milestone and reminds beachgoers: if you spot a sea turtle, keep your distance and call the NOAA stranding hotline at 562-506-4315.
Photo: Theklan, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
