More than 200 olive ridley sea turtle eggs were carefully excavated by biologists from two Orange County beach locations Friday morning, then taken to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach for safekeeping. With Hurricane Polo incoming, hazardous surf conditions, beach erosion and the risk of flooding could destroy or wash away the nests, officials with U.S. wildlife agencies overseeing the protection of the eggs said.
A sea turtle was spotted in Seal Beach on Sept. 16 digging a nest and laying eggs. Three days later and eight miles south in Huntington Beach, another sea turtle was found doing the same thing. The nests are the first recorded nesting of olive ridley sea turtles in California, making for an unprecedented situation. The eggs are being held in sand-filled containers in the Molina Animal Care Center.
After an incubation period of 45 to 60 days,ey were found, officials said. The Aquarium of the Pacific, which works with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has rehabilitated sea turtles since 2000. Jonathan Snyder, the acting field supervisor of the Carlsbad U.S. Fish and Wildlife office, said at a news conference at the aquarium Friday that it’s been a fast-moving and dynamic situation
In general, the Fish and Wildlife Service likes
“In general, the Fish and Wildlife Service likes to focus on the least intrusive method possible when trying to recover species,” Snyder said. “But in this case, the nests were going to be destroyed … We had to make some quick decisions, and I think this was the best decision for species recovery.” Lance Adams, a veterinarian at the Aquarium of the Pacific, said the eggs were transported in Styrofoam coolers to the aquarium.
They continue to be held there. Olive ridley sea turtles are some of the smallest sea turtles, typically found in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans. This is the peak of the nesting season for olive ridleys in Mexico, the season running from July to December. Adams said the hatching success of the two nests could be on the low side, since the eggs were moved more than a day after they were laid.
“We leave the eggs alone,” Adams said. “It’s going to take that full amount of [incubation] time before we say, ‘oh yeah, we see hatchlings’ and the eggs were fertile. Or, we see nothing and we have to go and investigate what might have happened.” Jeff Seminoff, who works at the NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, added that fewer than 1% of hatchlings actually make it to adulthood.
If a member of the public sees
If a member of the public sees a sea turtle nesting, in distress or suspects they have found a nest, they are asked to call the 24/7 West Coast Sea Turtle Stranding Hotline at (562) 506-4315. In May 2020, five sea turtle eggs were found in Huntington Beach and taken to Debbie McGuire, who was then executive director of the Wetlands & Wildlife Care Center. McGuire said in an email that she suspected the eggs might belong to green sea turtles, but DNA testing by NOAA Fisheries was inconclusive.
Since the 2020 eggs did not hatch and there was no observation of a sea turtle laying them, McGuire is not claiming that the discovery is a documented sea turtle nesting event. But McGuire, now the chief development officer for the Human-Wildlife Coexistence Initiative (HWCI), believes it is an interesting footnote to the nests that were recently discovered. “Sometimes wildlife gives us pieces of a story years before we understand what those pieces mean,” McGuire said in the email.
“I think that may be what makes this discovery so interesting … For me, the most exciting part is that something we discovered six years ago may now be part of a much bigger story. We have an opportunity to learn from what is happening right here on our beaches, and hopefully protect these animals and their habitat for the future.” Seminoff said Friday that the eggs discovered in 2020 had possibly not been stored correctly at a bit too high of a temperature, which made genetic analysis unsuccessful.
Some local residents had concerns that planes
Some local residents had concerns that planes at next weekend’s Pacific Airshow in Huntington Beach could cause damage to the eggs due to noise and vibration, but officials said that was not a factor in their decision to move them. Seminoff said that loud human sounds and vibrations have been found to have a negligible effect on the development of sea turtle eggs. Huntington Beach resident Brittany Andrews started a petition on change.org to cancel or postpone the air show, which had more than 1,700 signatures as of Friday afternoon.
Andrews, who lives close to the beach location where one of the nests were found, said in a phone interview that she was more concerned about the influx of visitors to the beach who could potentially damage the nests. “The whole goal of starting that petition was just to bring awareness to what was going on,” Andrews said. “Protecting them was and always is the main goal. I’m a little conflicted in the way I feel about them being moved …
But at the end of the day, we hope it all works out.”
