Latest news with #SanPedro-based
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Watch: Sea lion pups return to wild in Venice Beach
Animal advocates gathered in Venice Beach on Wednesday to celebrate the release of four sea lion pups back into the wild. Upon their release, the young marine mammals made their way toward freedom cautiously at first, though they quickly spotted the ocean and made their way into the Pacific waves. A Marine Mammal Care Center volunteer named Kayla told KTLA's Erin Myers that two of the youngsters had sustained shark bites, while the other two were 'malnourished and super skinny.' 'It's really nice seeing them get their weight back, and [one of the pups named] Spiderling especially had a really deep wound, so seeing her recover is really good,' Kayla said. These four pups came to the center amid a crisis in Southern California's ocean waters, as many sea creatures had been sickened by domoic acid, which is produced by algae blooms. Kayla noted that they typically get about 2,000 calls for service each year, but due to this recent bloom, they've received 4,000 already this year. That bloom began in February, and though the San Pedro-based MMCC said the danger has largely passed as of last month, algae blooms are expected to return, especially as climate change makes the oceans more acidic, conditions under which algae thrive. The MMCC has partnered with L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath to better prepare for the next algae bloom. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Yahoo
A dead sea lion was left alone 'for nature to take its course.' Someone decapitated it instead
Someone cut off the head of a sea lion in Northern California and rode off with it in a bag and authorities are now offering $20,000 for information that helps find the perpetrator. The body of the mutilated animal was found at Doran Regional Park in Bodega Bay on Christmas, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries announced this week. A member of the park's staff initially found the deceased animal and left it alone, per park policy, Sonoma County Regional Parks spokesperson Sarah Campbell said. The body was left "for nature to take its course," Campbell said, while the staffer went back to Doran's main office to retrieve gear to document the sea lion and send that information to San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences. But when the staffer returned later in the day, the carcass had been decapitated. A witness account said the individual appeared to be a man between 30 and 40 years old wearing all black and riding a black fat-tire e-bike, according to NOAA. The agency's office of law enforcement is investigating the death. NOAA is asking anyone with information to call its enforcement hotline at (800) 853-1964. The suspect was seen using a 8-inch black knife to remove the sea lion's head, placing it in a plastic bag and riding off, according to NOAA. John Warner, CEO of the San Pedro-based Marine Mammal Care Center, said aside from the "cruelty and weirdness" of the decapitation, the act of removing the head was not safe for the perpetrator and society in general. "We live in a world where avian flu is a concern and other zoonotic diseases can easily transfer to humans," Warner said. "You're taking a knife and likely not wearing PPE and you're putting your health and that of others in jeopardy." Read more: Sea lion suffering from domoic acid poisoning attacked at Ventura Beach From a legal standpoint, the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibits the harassment, hunting, capturing or killing of sea lions and other marine mammals. Harassment includes harming an animal's body after death with limited exceptions, including for educational and scientific purposes, NOAA officials said. Incidents of sea mammal cruelty are not rare in California. Earlier this month on Ventura Beach, a man was arrested after a sea lion suffering from domoic acid poisoning was beaten. An unknown individual also shot and killed a 2-year-old sea lion at Bolsa Chica State Beach on Aug. 7. Read more: 'Beyond creepy': Someone in Westchester is killing dozens of crows, neighbors say Warner said that more animals were brought to the Marine Mammal Care Center in 2024 for gunshot wounds than any in other year he's aware of. "Cruelty to animals is unfortunately alive and well," he said. He said he was unaware of any bogus claims of medicinal value for sea lion body parts, as is sometimes noted for rhino horns or donkey skins. "Thank God there have been no links to sea lions, otherwise I fear this wouldn't be shocking or abnormal, if that was the case," Warner said. The public is asked to report a dead, injured or stranded marine mammal to the West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network at (866) 767-6114. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
13-03-2025
- Los Angeles Times
A dead sea lion was left alone ‘for nature to take its course.' Someone decapitated it instead
Someone cut off the head of a sea lion in Northern California and rode off with it in a bag and authorities are now offering $20,000 for information that helps find the perpetrator. The body of the mutilated animal was found at Doran Regional Park in Bodega Bay on Christmas, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries announced this week. A member of the park's staff initially found the deceased animal and left it alone, per park policy, Sonoma County Regional Parks spokesperson Sarah Campbell said. The body was left 'for nature to take its course,' Campbell said, while the staffer went back to Doran's main office to retrieve gear to document the sea lion and send that information to San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences. But when the staffer returned later in the day, the carcass had been decapitated. A witness account said the individual appeared to be a man between 30 and 40 years old wearing all black and riding a black fat-tire e-bike, according to NOAA. The agency's office of law enforcement is investigating the death. NOAA is asking anyone with information to call its enforcement hotline at (800) 853-1964. The suspect was seen using a 8-inch black knife to remove the sea lion's head, placing it in a plastic bag and riding off, according to NOAA. John Warner, CEO of the San Pedro-based Marine Mammal Care Center, said aside from the 'cruelty and weirdness' of the decapitation, the act of removing the head was not safe for the perpetrator and society in general. 'We live in a world where avian flu is a concern and other zoonotic diseases can easily transfer to humans,' Warner said. 'You're taking a knife and likely not wearing PPE and you're putting your health and that of others in jeopardy.' From a legal standpoint, the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibits the harassment, hunting, capturing or killing of sea lions and other marine mammals. Harassment includes harming an animal's body after death with limited exceptions, including for educational and scientific purposes, NOAA officials said. Incidents of sea mammal cruelty are not rare in California. Earlier this month on Ventura Beach, a man was arrested after a sea lion suffering from domoic acid poisoning was beaten. An unknown individual also shot and killed a 2-year-old sea lion at Bolsa Chica State Beach on Aug. 7. Warner said that more animals were brought to the Marine Mammal Care Center in 2024 for gunshot wounds than any in other year he's aware of. 'Cruelty to animals is unfortunately alive and well,' he said. He said he was unaware of any bogus claims of medicinal value for sea lion body parts, as is sometimes noted for rhino horns or donkey skins. 'Thank God there have been no links to sea lions, otherwise I fear this wouldn't be shocking or abnormal, if that was the case,' Warner said. The public is asked to report a dead, injured or stranded marine mammal to the West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network at (866) 767-6114.
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
'Like someone put a blanket over the ocean': Kelp could be among fires' casualties
The boat bobbed gently off Malibu's Big Rock Beach as a trio of scientific divers wriggled into wetsuits and double-checked tanks and regulators. Behind them unfurled a panorama of devastation from the Palisades fire a month earlier. Blackened vegetation dotted the hillsides rising above Pacific Coast Highway. Rubble and lonely chimneys littered the shore where beachfront homes once stood. One by one, the three divers slipped beneath the surface, nets and knives at the ready. They were seeking evidence of the fire's underwater toll, particularly its effect on a vital anchor of the coastal ecosystem: kelp. The divers were with Kelp Ark, a San Pedro-based nonprofit seed bank that preserves and stores genetic material from West Coast kelp species. The Feb. 10 dive was their second since fire and subsequent rains injected tons of ash and debris into the ocean ecosystem. 'When we think about wildfires, we think a lot about how that impacts the terrestrial realm, how destructive it can be to the land,' said Lori Berberian, a second-year PhD student in geography at UCLA who studies the effects of wildfire on kelp abundance and habitat distribution. 'But there are huge implications for the coast.' Forests of kelp, a fast-growing brown algae, provide food and habitat for hundreds of marine species and absorb greenhouse gases that might otherwise hasten climate change. Yet kelp is also highly sensitive to environmental changes. Fluctuations in temperature, light availability, nutrients and pollutants can have surprisingly swift consequences on kelp populations, which have waxed and waned along the California coast in recent decades. And few things have shocked L.A.'s ecology like January's Palisades and Eaton fires, which burned more than 40,000 acres, destroyed at least 12,000 buildings and drained tons of ash, debris and toxic residue into the ocean. No one yet knows how sea life will respond to an urban fire of this magnitude. Kelp may be one of the first species to tell us. 'They're a big sentinel species that are indicators of how our coastal ecosystems are thriving,' said Erin Hestir, a remote sensing specialist and associate professor at UC Merced. Hestir is the principal investigator of KelpFire, a NASA-funded research project that uses remote sensing and on-the-ground observations to track the effects of wildfire runoff on kelp populations. While every rainfall washes dirt and urban gunk into the ocean, that process is turbocharged after a wildfire. Fire consumes vegetation that would otherwise hold soil in place and alters soil chemistry so that it absorbs less water. This massive infusion of sediment disrupts kelp's access to two things it needs to survive: rocks and sunlight. A glut of dirt and pollutants can interfere with kelp spores' ability to securely attach to rocks and reefs, either by binding to the spores themselves or by littering rock surfaces. And when ash and debris fall upon the ocean's surface, it reduces the amount of sunlight that filters through the water and provides the light kelp needs to photosynthesize. Kelp isn't the only marine species that suffers when deprived of light or pumped with pollution. But the prominent role it plays makes it an important bellwether for broader problems spurred by a changing climate. Berberian, the UCLA doctoral student, is also a member of the research team. She developed a Post-Fire Kelp Recovery Index to compare kelp canopy extent after a fire to its historical average. The team found that mature giant kelp beds shrank after the 2016 Soberanes fire in Monterey County, the 2017 Thomas fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, and the 2018 Woolsey fire in the Santa Monica Mountains. They still haven't returned to pre-fire levels, Hestir said. Recovery rates varied widely by location. Using satellite data, Berberian found that the median recovery rate of kelp beds near Malibu was a mere 7% in the two years after the Woolsey fire. In the same time period, beds off of Palos Verdes rebounded 61%, with some areas recovering almost completely. All of those fires dumped sediment into the ocean. But January's infernos introduced a new variable, said Kyle Cavanaugh, a coastal geographer and UCLA professor who is also on the KelpFire team. Previous wildfires burned mostly brush, trees and other organic material. The Palisades and Eaton fires incinerated homes, cars and everything in them: plastics, electronics, batteries, asbestos, lead pipes and household chemicals. No one knows yet what effect this will have on sea life. 'There's certainly evidence that certain types of hydrocarbons and metals are toxic to early life stages of giant kelp, and you might expect that would be a bigger issue with all of the urban structures that burnt,' Cavanaugh said. 'That's something somewhat unique about this." California's giant kelp faces a number of different threats, and Hestir cautioned between drawing a direct line between any single disturbance — fire included — and decline of visible canopy. Yet as the environmental disruptions pile up — prolonged marine heat waves, changing ocean chemistry, stronger and more frequent storms — so does the worry that the next disturbance could be a tipping point. 'What we're concerned about is that these kelp are already under these stressors . . . and then you end up with a wildfire event, and maybe that's what really tips it over the edge and doesn't allow it to recover,' Hestir said. Kelp Ark's divers observed these challenging conditions firsthand during an initial post-fire collection trip on Jan. 27. Days earlier, the first significant rains since May sent contaminants surging into the ocean. The ship's wake was the color of chocolate milk. The ocean seemed to reek of burnt trash, said crew member Taylor Collins. The anchor chain, which on a typical day is visible for about 10 feet into the water, disappeared into opaque murk mere inches below the surface. Before the divers rolled in, captain Joey Broyles let down a waterproof camera to assess conditions below. The first 3 feet of seawater were choked with soot, dirt and pollution, said Bernadeth Tolentino, lead scientific diver and a graduate student in the USC lab of Kelp Ark founder Sergey Nuzhdin. Visibility beneath the layer of soot was close to zero, she said. Divers held hands to keep track of one another underwater before calling it quits. 'It was almost like someone put a blanket over the ocean,' Tolentino said. Two weeks after that murky dive near Malibu Creek, the Kelp Ark team set out again to collect kelp samples to take back to their facility at AltaSea in the Port of Los Angeles for analysis and spore harvesting. For this outing they chose a spot popular with recreational divers, where kelp was frequently recorded prior to the fires. Two hours after plunging into the ocean, Tolentino and colleagues Declan Bulwa and Sedona Silva climbed wet and winded back into the boat. They'd seen all the animals a diver would expect to see in a kelp forest, such as garibaldi fish and kelp bass. But the only signs of the big brown algae were a few loose floating pieces and some decaying holdfasts on rocks near the shore — a sign that kelp had been there in the recent past, but no longer. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
02-03-2025
- Science
- Los Angeles Times
‘Like someone put a blanket over the ocean': Kelp could be among fires' casualties
The boat bobbed gently off Malibu's Big Rock Beach as a trio of scientific divers wriggled into wetsuits and double-checked tanks and regulators. Behind them unfurled a panorama of devastation from the Palisades fire a month earlier. Blackened vegetation dotted the hillsides rising above Pacific Coast Highway. Rubble and lonely chimneys littered the shore where beachfront homes once stood. One by one, the three divers slipped beneath the surface, nets and knives at the ready. They were seeking evidence of the fire's underwater toll, particularly its effect on a vital anchor of the coastal ecosystem: kelp. The divers were with Kelp Ark, a San Pedro-based nonprofit seed bank that preserves and stores genetic material from West Coast kelp species. The Feb. 10 dive was their second since fire and subsequent rains injected tons of ash and debris into the ocean ecosystem. 'When we think about wildfires, we think a lot about how that impacts the terrestrial realm, how destructive it can be to the land,' said Lori Berberian, a second-year PhD student in geography at UCLA who studies the effects of wildfire on kelp abundance and habitat distribution. 'But there are huge implications for the coast.' Forests of kelp, a fast-growing brown algae, provide food and habitat for hundreds of marine species and absorb greenhouse gases that might otherwise hasten climate change. Yet kelp is also highly sensitive to environmental changes. Fluctuations in temperature, light availability, nutrients and pollutants can have surprisingly swift consequences on kelp populations, which have waxed and waned along the California coast in recent decades. And few things have shocked L.A.'s ecology like January's Palisades and Eaton fires, which burned more than 40,000 acres, destroyed at least 12,000 buildings and drained tons of ash, debris and toxic residue into the ocean. No one yet knows how sea life will respond to an urban fire of this magnitude. Kelp may be one of the first species to tell us. 'They're a big sentinel species that are indicators of how our coastal ecosystems are thriving,' said Erin Hestir, a remote sensing specialist and associate professor at UC Merced. Hestir is the principal investigator of KelpFire, a NASA-funded research project that uses remote sensing and on-the-ground observations to track the effects of wildfire runoff on kelp populations. While every rainfall washes dirt and urban gunk into the ocean, that process is turbocharged after a wildfire. Fire consumes vegetation that would otherwise hold soil in place and alters soil chemistry so that it absorbs less water. This massive infusion of sediment disrupts kelp's access to two things it needs to survive: rocks and sunlight. A glut of dirt and pollutants can interfere with kelp spores' ability to securely attach to rocks and reefs, either by binding to the spores themselves or by littering rock surfaces. And when ash and debris fall upon the ocean's surface, it reduces the amount of sunlight that filters through the water and provides the light kelp needs to photosynthesize. Kelp isn't the only marine species that suffers when deprived of light or pumped with pollution. But the prominent role it plays makes it an important bellwether for broader problems spurred by a changing climate. Berberian, the UCLA doctoral student, is also a member of the research team. She developed a Post-Fire Kelp Recovery Index to compare kelp canopy extent after a fire to its historical average. The team found that mature giant kelp beds shrank after the 2016 Soberanes fire in Monterey County, the 2017 Thomas fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, and the 2018 Woolsey fire in the Santa Monica Mountains. They still haven't returned to pre-fire levels, Hestir said. Recovery rates varied widely by location. Using satellite data, Berberian found that the median recovery rate of kelp beds near Malibu was a mere 7% in the two years after the Woolsey fire. In the same time period, beds off of Palos Verdes rebounded 61%, with some areas recovering almost completely. All of those fires dumped sediment into the ocean. But January's infernos introduced a new variable, said Kyle Cavanaugh, a coastal geographer and UCLA professor who is also on the KelpFire team. Previous wildfires burned mostly brush, trees and other organic material. The Palisades and Eaton fires incinerated homes, cars and everything in them: plastics, electronics, batteries, asbestos, lead pipes and household chemicals. No one knows yet what effect this will have on sea life. 'There's certainly evidence that certain types of hydrocarbons and metals are toxic to early life stages of giant kelp, and you might expect that would be a bigger issue with all of the urban structures that burnt,' Cavanaugh said. 'That's something somewhat unique about this.' California's giant kelp faces a number of different threats, and Hestir cautioned between drawing a direct line between any single disturbance — fire included — and decline of visible canopy. Yet as the environmental disruptions pile up — prolonged marine heat waves, changing ocean chemistry, stronger and more frequent storms — so does the worry that the next disturbance could be a tipping point. 'What we're concerned about is that these kelp are already under these stressors . . . and then you end up with a wildfire event, and maybe that's what really tips it over the edge and doesn't allow it to recover,' Hestir said. Kelp Ark's divers observed these challenging conditions firsthand during an initial post-fire collection trip on Jan. 27. Days earlier, the first significant rains since May sent contaminants surging into the ocean. The ship's wake was the color of chocolate milk. The ocean seemed to reek of burnt trash, said crew member Taylor Collins. The anchor chain, which on a typical day is visible for about 10 feet into the water, disappeared into opaque murk mere inches below the surface. Before the divers rolled in, captain Joey Broyles let down a waterproof camera to assess conditions below. The first 3 feet of seawater were choked with soot, dirt and pollution, said Bernadeth Tolentino, lead scientific diver and a graduate student in the USC lab of Kelp Ark founder Sergey Nuzhdin. Visibility beneath the layer of soot was close to zero, she said. Divers held hands to keep track of one another underwater before calling it quits. 'It was almost like someone put a blanket over the ocean,' Tolentino said. Two weeks after that murky dive near Malibu Creek, the Kelp Ark team set out again to collect kelp samples to take back to their facility at AltaSea in the Port of Los Angeles for analysis and spore harvesting. For this outing they chose a spot popular with recreational divers, where kelp was frequently recorded prior to the fires. Two hours after plunging into the ocean, Tolentino and colleagues Declan Bulwa and Sedona Silva climbed wet and winded back into the boat. They'd seen all the animals a diver would expect to see in a kelp forest, such as garibaldi fish and kelp bass. But the only signs of the big brown algae were a few loose floating pieces and some decaying holdfasts on rocks near the shore — a sign that kelp had been there in the recent past, but no longer.
