Sea turtle migration starting sooner than normal, due in part to El Nino

From storm surges to rainfall, the affects from this past winter have been felt all across the Central Coast. Now, sea turtles traveling across the Pacific Ocean will arrive at California’s coast sooner than usual, due in part to warmer ocean waters that were associated with El Nio. There’s already been sea turtle spotting’s in southern California within the past few weeks, but all of this is not necessarily a good thing.

Hundreds of leatherback sea turtles travel over 7,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean to feed on jellyfish off the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington.

“We’d love to have them out here year round, but it does tend to focus around those summer months. Basically, June through July, even August,” said Dan Albro with the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

But this year, they may be showing up as soon as May.

“Periods when waters are a little warmer, or less productive, and these can be associated with El Nino, we would expect to see these turtles show up a little early,” said Scott Benson, Marine Scientist with NOAA.

However, the warmer water that’s been in the Pacific Ocean has made it difficult for valuable nutrients to mix up to the surface. That means less food for the leatherback sea turtles when they arrive to California. And worse than no food is the fact that these turtles often consume plastic floating in the ocean.

“The main prey of a leatherback sea turtle would be a gelatinous animal, like a jellyfish, a plastic bag looks exactly like a jellyfish to a leatherback,” said Albro.

In about 20 years, this 85 million year old species may face extinction, but as far as their current visit goes, the shortage of food may force an early departure.

“And not finding the forage material available to them in terms of dense aggregations of jellies, and then move somewhere else, maybe north of San Francisco,” said Benson.

These turtles are normally found here as late as October but that doesn’t look to be the case this year.