www.montereycountynow.com JULY 2-8, 2026 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 13 Over the last couple of months, the team at the Marine Mammal Center has been noticing a concerning new pattern: strandings and rescues are trending higher on average, with 40-45 percent of rescues from Mendocino to San Luis Obispo occurring in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. “Right now we’re seeing a pretty high volume of malnourished sea lion pups born last June,” says Giancarlo Rulli, spokesperson for the nonprofit. “The state of malnourishment is impressive; they’re either dying in transport or they’re having to be humanely euthanized.” California has experienced unusually warm ocean temperatures over the last nine months, according to Nate Mantua, a climate scientist at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz. The warm water suppresses normal upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water that fuels the marine food web. Marine Mammal Center staff note this may be forcing sea lion mothers to travel farther to find fish, leaving pups more vulnerable to starvation. At the same time, another marine event is unfolding. Domoic acid, a neurotoxin produced by blooms of the algae Pseudo-nitzschia, has recently been detected in high levels in Monterey Bay fish. On June 26, the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife issued a health advisory after samples of anchovies and sardines tested high for the neurotoxin. Domoic acid accumulates up the food chain, attacking the brain and heart of larger marine mammals and causing seizures. Scientists at UC Santa Cruz determined that two humpback whales stranded in the region in June died from exposure to the toxin. Marine Mammal Center staff worry the combination of starving animals and domoic acid poisoning may cause problems as summer crowds return to local beaches. “Del Monte Beach has been a top hot-spot for these interactions for years now, and that bears out in the data that we’re seeing,” Rulli says. “You have hundreds, if not thousands of people on the beach. When you’re dealing with an outbreak like domoic acid poisoning, where you have unpredictable behavior, approaching an animal could induce a seizure. That’s where it elevates.” Compounding these concerns, an El Niño is underway in the tropics, according to Mantua. Combined with an already unusually warm ocean, it could exacerbate conditions that favor marine heatwaves and harmful algal blooms. Mantua says the current conditions are “similar but not identical” to those that preceded “the Blob” in 2015, which devastated marine ecosystems and fueled toxic algal blooms. “Big El Niños have always been part of the Earth’s climate that messes with California in a very big way,” Mantua says. “What’s different about those big events of the past is they didn’t always come on top of an already near record warm ocean. We’ve got this higher baseline that these El Niño cycles are riding on, impacting what happens on our coast.” Turbulent Waters A confluence of deadly factors lead officials to urge the public to avoid stranded marine mammals. By Katie Rodriguez Volunteers at the Marine Mammal Center in Castroville load up sea lion carcasses to be transported to the nonprofit’s headquarters in Sausalito for necropsies. NEWS “They’re dying in transport.” KATIE RODRIGUEZ
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