October 2, 2026

Never Before on the West Coast: Olive Ridleys Nested in Surfside 🐢

The signs just went up on the sand where I live in Surfside. Keep your eyes open. This beach is potential nesting habitat for olive ridley sea turtles. If you have walked Anderson, Surfside, or Sunset this week, you have seen them. This is not a drill, and it is not something that has ever happened here.

On September 16, an olive ridley crawled out of the Pacific around 3 in the afternoon and dug her nest in the sand near Surfside, by the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge. A beachgoer thought she might be hurt and called the lifeguards. She was not hurt. She was laying eggs. Three days later, September 19, around 7 at night, a second olive ridley came ashore near the Huntington Beach Pier, south of Tower 15, and did the same thing. NOAA photo ID, done by research biologist Dr. Cali Turner Tomaszewicz, showed they were two different turtles. Body shape, barnacles, and the scute pattern on the shell, unique as a fingerprint.

NOAA Fisheries says this is the first time sea turtles have nested on the U.S. West Coast. Not the first olive ridley. The first natural nest of any sea turtle species ever recorded on this coast. These animals nest by the thousands in Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. We see them offshore in warm years. They had never been documented laying eggs on a California beach. Until Surfside. Until Huntington Beach. Until this year.

Jeffrey Seminoff, who heads NOAA’s marine turtle ecology and assessment program, put it plain. It is not clear why these two came ashore in Orange County. Back-to-back marine heat waves and the approaching El Niño have driven up sea temperatures on their usual nesting beaches. They may have been looking for better conditions. They may have made a navigational miss. Either way, El Niño 2026 put a tropical turtle on our sand. Absolutely magnificent.

Then the ocean turned on the nests. Hurricane Polo was sending hazardous surf and high tides straight at both beaches. On the morning of September 25, teams from U.S. Fish and Wildlife, NOAA, and the Aquarium of the Pacific were on the sand at 6 a.m. They lifted the eggs one by one. 104 from the Seal Beach nest. 100 from Huntington Beach. 204 eggs, packed in sand in coolers, cradled in the car so the road would not shake them, and driven to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

Jonathan Snyder, biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said they had to make quick decisions, and this was the best one for the species. Dr. Lance Adams, veterinarian at the Aquarium of the Pacific, called it unprecedented and said they are proud to give these eggs a temporary home. The eggs are in sand-filled containers in a quiet room at the Molina Animal Care Center. Temperature and humidity watched. Incubation runs 45 to 60 days. If they hatch, the plan is to release the little ones on the same beaches where their mothers laid them, so they can crawl to the Pacific the way they were meant to.

Friedman Adventures was on this from the first morning. We were the only media on the sand recording that extraction, and that footage is still archived on the Friedman Adventures YouTube channel. We have been covering it ever since. The signs you are seeing now are the next chapter. NOAA says an olive ridley will often nest two or three times in a season, about two weeks apart, in the same general stretch of beach. More turtles may still come.

If you see a turtle, tracks, or a nest, do not crowd it. Do not touch the fencing. Give her room, shoot photos of several sides if you can do it from a distance, and call the lifeguards or the NOAA West Coast stranding line at (562) 506-4315. These are endangered animals, and this beach just made history.

Check http://friedmanadventures.com for Captain’s audios, landing and boat counts, bait availability, Friedman Adventures AI, kids corner, and lots more.

Friedman Adventures Surf Fishing Festival is Saturday, October 24 at Anderson Street and PCH, Sunset Beach. Free family event. Eyes open for turtles while you are there.

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