A tiny sea turtle emerged from its sandy nursery around 7:15 p.m. on Friday and made history.
Less than two inches long and weighing about as much as a large strawberry, the olive ridley was California’s first native-born sea turtle.
For two hours, the lone hatchling waited atop a pile of sand and eggs in a styrofoam cooler, the makeshift incubator at the Aquarium of the Pacific where a clutch of eggs laid Sept. 16 on Seal Beach had been since late September.
Then another tiny turtle appeared. And another.
Soon, the contents of the cooler “went from looking like smooth beach sand to an eruption of baby turtles,” said Dr. Lance Adams, the aquarium’s director of veterinary services. “It was very exciting. And very, very cute.”
Altogether, 54 tiny turtles emerged. Aquarium staff and federal biologists gently transferred them to a carrier and transported them from the Long Beach facility to a spot in Seal Beach near the original nest.
They placed them on the sand and watched as all 54 hatchlings scooted into the sea and disappeared into the waves.
Fifty eggs remain in the cooler and could hatch in coming days, Adams said.
A second cooler of 104 eggs laid Sept. 19 in Huntington Beach also remains in the aquarium’s temperature- and humidity-controlled room.
As biologists celebrated the hatchlings’ successful release, disappointing news came from Ventura, where a third olive ridley nest appeared Nov. 1 on San Buenaventura State Beach..
Recorded sand temperatures there in recent days were significantly lower than those of olive ridleys’ usual nesting grounds. Then Friday’s high tides wiped the sheltering sand off the nest and exposed the eggs.
“That pretty much destroyed the nest,” said biologist Jonathan Snyder of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The few eggs that weren’t swept away by the waves were deemed not viable and removed from the beach, he said.
Since the surprise appearance of the first known sea turtle nests on the U.S. West Coast, no one has been certain whether any of the eggs were fertilized or viable.
Olive ridleys are normally found throughout tropical regions of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans, with large nesting populations in Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Before September, the farthest known northern nest was approximately 700 miles south of Orange County in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur.
An extreme marine heat wave and a strong El Niño have pushed Southern California water temperatures closer to those of the turtles’ typical nesting grounds.
Federal biologists made a last-minute decision to relocate the Orange County eggs to the aquarium on Sept. 29, after forecasters predicted that high tides would swamp those nests.
For weeks, aquarium staff have carefully monitored the clutches and did their best to maintain “artificial conditions mimicking ideal natural conditions,” Adams said.
The species typically has a 45- to 60-day incubation period. The first hatchlings emerged 55 days after their eggs were laid.
No one yet knows whether this year’s sea turtles are an anomaly or the first of many to nest on California beaches in the future. Staff urged the public to keep a lookout for the animals and report any sightings to a lifeguard or the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at 562-506-4315.
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