Tropical, Subtropical Species Washing Up On CA Beaches, Along With Gray Whales That Starved To Death
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As many as five at a time have been foraging in San Francisco Bay, the vast inlet about an hour south of here along the Sonoma and Marin coasts. The number is far larger than in a normal year, when one or two might wander in beneath the Golden Gate Bridge for a day or two at most. These whales now are staying for as long as a month. And, for the first time, there are two species in the bay at the same time – grays and humpbacks, both usually speeding north to their Bering Sea feeding grounds this time of year.
Instead, whale-watching boats are having more luck in the opaque waters off Berkeley on the bay’s eastern edge than in the open ocean. Three grays have also washed up dead on bay shores in recent weeks, their stomachs empty. “Our guess is that they are superhungry, maybe looking for a little food before continuing north,” said Bill Keener, a marine mammal biologist who has been tracking whales, dolphins and porpoises in the bay for decades as head of Golden Gate Cetacean Research. “But why are they staying this long? We can’t really figure out what these guys are doing.”
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Last year, scientists identified a yellow-bellied sea snake that had washed up on Newport Beach in Orange County, the first time the tropical species had been found in California in a non-El Nino year. Then, in March, an olive Ridley sea turtle was spotted by lobster fishermen off Capistrano Beach, in part because a sea gull was resting on its back. The turtle migrates on warm currents, one of which may have swept it so far north.
Things got even weirder a few hours’ drive north in Santa Barbara County, where a hoodwinker sunfish washed up in March. The fish, about 7 feet long and weighing a ton, is among the more bizarre-looking creatures of the sea. So, too, was its place of death: A hoodwinker had not been seen in the northern hemisphere for more than a century. “These extreme events exaggerate the rate of change that is taking place in our oceans,” said Jacqueline Sones, research coordinator at the Bodega Marine Reserve, referring to the back-to-back blob-El Nino phenomenon. “And if you have more of these extreme events, you will see an even greater rate of change.”
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https://www.bgdailynews.com/washington_post/lost-sea-creatures-wash-up-on-california-shores-as-climate/article_4b396a94-01de-576e-aa29-16b408850d58.html