Sick and dead marine mammals have been littering the Southern California coast for months, poisoned by waves of toxic algae blooms, which have rescue groups working overtime and burning through their budgets.
Since late February, more than 800 poisoned animals have been reported in just Los Angeles and Orange counties and authorities have repeatedly warned beachgoers to keep their distance as the sickened animals struggle in the surf — there have been a few incidents of aggressive animals and bites reported.
The blooms hit earlier and harder this year and also prompted earlier than usual advisories warning humans to avoid eating mussels, clams, scallops or oysters they harvest themselves from Santa Barbara to San Diego counties.
Commercially sold varieties of the shellfish are frequently tested and not a concern, officials said, but “sport-harvested” shellfish could be poisoned by the same toxin that’s been causing sea lions, dolphins and sea birds to strand daily in large numbers on local beaches.
The California Department of Public Health issued the warning against recreational harvesting weeks earlier than the annual quarantine typically put in place because of springtime blooms.
It is actually two toxins menacing sea life: domoic acid, which can cause gastrointestinal and neurological issues, and the “extremely deadly” saxitoxin, said Clarissa Anderson, director of the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System and biological oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.
“It will kill marine mammals with impunity, and often they will drown offshore,” she said. “We won’t even see them. So we may be underestimating the impacts of this, because we’re not even seeing a lot of the animals that are getting hit.”
The saxitoxin leads to paralytic shellfish poisoning and humans eating poisoned shellfish can experience severe illness, much like the marine mammals are experiencing, including short-term memory loss, seizures and in some cases, death.
“It’s really bad, and it’s fairly unprecedented to have not only a massive domoic acid event in Southern California, but also so much saxitoxin,” Anderson said. “I’ve never seen it in my career.”
Domoic acid poisoning has also been declared the cause of death of two whales that washed ashore in recent weeks.
With an unending number of sea creatures dying from eating sardines, anchovies and shellfish poisoned by toxic algae blooms, marine mammal rescue centers along the Southern California coast are overwhelmed emotionally, financially and are out of space.
“We’re now in week 11, this has never happened before,” said John Warner, CEO of the Marine Mammal Center Los Angeles in San Pedro, which since the start of the year has had 400 animals in its care. “Even if it starts to taper off, we’ll still see animals with chronic and acute problems. The mortality rate is higher than we’ve ever experienced — 60% of sea lions are dying with us doing everything we can.”
Rescue centers are in triage mode trying to deal with the influx and have issued urgent requests for funds to help with animal care and medicines. MMCLA is hoping the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors might come through with some help at a meeting on May 6.
Since February, the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, which rescues sick marine mammals along the Orange County coast, has responded to 235 calls and currently has 95 animals in its care, said CEO Glenn Gray.
A recent “urgent appeal” raised $115,000 from the community, but Gray said that amount won’t last long. The animals consume about 8% of their body weight daily, plus medicine and treatment supplies. The staff and rescue trucks are operating from dawn to dusk, incurring overtime and fuel costs, he said.
Gray said he hasn’t asked cities for financial contributions, but they are covering the cost of disposing of the dead animals and the help from local lifeguards makes a big difference.
Keith Matassa, a marine biologist who runs the Ocean Animal Response and Research Alliance, a nonprofit that responds to dead marine life on beaches from Malibu to Seal Beach, called this outbreak the worst he’s seen since 1998. In just one recent week, he picked up 61 dead animals. Since the outbreak, he said his team has collected more than 230 animals.
“It’s pretty staggering,” he said. “We’re three-quarters through our yearly budget.”
Matassa said the bulk of his funding comes from federal grants, a well he’s concerned could dry up given the recent cuts made to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The necropsies he does on the dead animals are hugely significant to understanding the ocean environment, Matassa added.
Sen. Catherine Blakespear, who represents much of the Southern California coastline in the 38th Senate District, said she and her friends regularly exercise along the beach and have spotted dead sea birds.
“So I definitely identify it as a reality that’s happening right now that’s really tragic,” she said.
Since 2015, the state budget has included $2 million for the California Marine Mammal Stranding Network — a statewide coalition of 14 federally authorized groups that respond to stranded or injured marine mammals along the coast — and for some smaller rescues, the funding can cover up to half of typical annual operating costs.
“I don’t currently believe that is in jeopardy,” Blakespear, D-Encinitas, said. “But we do know we’re facing a $10 to $20 billion deficit.”
Blakespear said she’s concerned about federal cuts to NOAA, which has a central role in tracking algae blooms and supporting the stranding network.
NOAA has faced funding threats during both Trump administrations. Although Congress blocked most of those reductions in President Donald Trump’s first term, he has renewed efforts to slash the agency’s budget and has already dismissed hundreds of its employees. NOAA research, data and grants programs face a $1.3 billion cut under the budget proposal Trump released Friday for the 2026 fiscal year.
At MMCLA, crews are scrambling to keep up with the demands. On top of the hundreds taken in for care, the center has responded to at least 100 dead or dying dolphins on local beaches, Warner said.
But his staff and volunteers aren’t the only ones overburdened.
“Lifeguards are the first ones to see these dolphins, and they’re doing everything to keep them comfortable, but it’s a 100% mortality event with dolphins and they’re watching these dolphins die,” he said. “This is traumatic. Over the weekend, our vet got there, and lifeguards are crying, they’re distraught, they can’t do their job.”
“I think the emotional toll it takes is not something people really know,” Warner added.
The Wetlands & Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach has taken in 230 birds suffering from toxic poisoning. The majority have been brown pelicans; more than 100 have died. The center has also taken in cormorants, loons, terns, ducks and one female albatross — they’re typically found on the islands of Hawaii and Midway.
The International Bird Rescue Center in San Pedro has taken in 84 birds, of which 49 are pelicans.
The animals and birds are mostly poisoned from eating sardines and anchovies — in big supply right now after several scarce years — that have consumed the poisoned algae, but humans are not “forking that stuff down” like the sea creatures and likely wouldn’t get sick, though Anderson said she would not eat surf fish caught near shore, since there’s no mandate from state or federal governments to monitor for toxins and it’s unknown if they are impacted.
Swimming and surfing are safe, she said, because the toxin poisoning is through the food web, not external exposure.
“The animals are getting it through eating anchovy. They’re not getting it because they’re swimming in the waters,” Anderson said. “If you’re just swimming in the ocean, you wouldn’t have any kind of reaction. You’re not eating the plankton. And even if you swallow some water, you couldn’t possibly be consuming the volume you’d need to accumulate toxins to make you sick.”
For some surfers, it’s not worth the risk.
The slew of sick and dying animals has kept Ellie Laita and a group of friends in Los Angeles out of the water. Instead, they recently traveled to a man-made wave pool in Palm Springs for a surf session after being kept on dry land for months.
“We can’t surf because the bay is so polluted. The marine life, and mammals especially, are really suffering and we’re just taking a cue and trying to take care of ourselves,” Laita said. “So we are here because we can surf safely and not be poisoned.”
The recent domoic acid outbreak is not one continuous event, but rather a “pulse” of several outbreaks since December, when it first originated off of Baja before spreading north to California, Anderson said.
La Nina conditions with colder-than-normal water, along with upwelling that brings nutrient-rich water to the surface, create an environment that allows the harmful algae to bloom.
This type of phytoplankton bloom that creates domoic acid toxins is not an uncommon occurrence, there have been several the past four years, Anderson said.
“What we’re dealing with this year – with the bloom spanning from Baja to Monterey Bay – is an ‘oceanographic phenomenon,’” she said.
Leery to release sea lions close to shore where they might be sick again, Gray said the PMMC staff is asking if boat captains would help them take the animals further out to sea to be released.
“Generally, the sea lions will not necessarily come back to shore, but will start to head over to the Channel Islands,” he said. “That’s a big pressure point relief because we need capacity if this thing just keeps continuing, we’re full. We could be approaching 100, and given the mix, that’s a full house.”
Scientists are trying to figure out why the blooms have spread over such a large range, and why they are continuing for so long. It can’t be pinpointed to one thing, but local impacts can enhance toxicity and the likelihood of an organism to bloom, Anderson said.
Local impacts such as the massive fires that tore through the Pacific Palisades and Malibu.
Santa Monica Pier, based on water samples, has a higher abundance of the organism’s signature than Anderson said she has seen in her more than 25 years of studying these blooms. That coincides with a month and a half of ash falling and washing out to the ocean.
“Ash, we know, delivers nitrate to the water, which plankton need to grow,” she said.
Some have questioned if the fire retardant could be a culprit, but that has phosphorus, not something that typically stimulates blooms to grow in coastal California, Anderson said. “So the ash would be the culprit here, if it is indeed the culprit for some localized enhancement in and around the Los Angeles area.”
The only way to know for sure, she noted, is to do experiments outside of the routine monitoring, to have ships out in the sea doing studies — but that comes down to resources.
“The public might not understand the kind of funding that’s required to answer these questions, funding we just don’t have,” Anderson said during a call from Washington D.C., where she was meeting with lawmakers to urge them not to cut federal funding as recently proposed by the Trump administration.
Warner said he is hopeful a recent shout-out from Second District Supervisor Holly Mitchell is an indication the L.A. Board of Supervisors might support helping with funding.
“We have a collective responsibility to address this,” Mitchell said during her weekly “Sippin’ my Tea” update. “We’re taking steps at an upcoming Board of Supervisors meeting to raise public awareness and help identify sustainable solutions. I’m calling on my beach cities and flood districts to have a coordinated response to this. It’s going to take resources and money, and I’m hoping all of us will come to the plate to step up with resources.”
With that on the horizon, Warner is also hopeful that Sen. Bill Allen, who represents Senate District 24 covering the coastal areas of Los Angeles County, will be successful in increasing the state’s annual $2 million contribution to the Marine Mammal Stranding Network to $5 million.
“We’re following the situation carefully and we’re very concerned about it,” Allen said. “Obviously, the budget is in very bad shape, so everything is being analyzed through that lens.”
The financial challenge is starting to weigh heavily on local governments, he added.
“One of the biggest (struggles) is just the fact that a lot of the cities in my district — Rancho Palos Verdes, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach … Long Beach as well — they’ve allocated, in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars out of their city budgets to support the centers.”