More than 200 olive ridley sea turtle eggs pulled from two Orange County beaches just ahead of a tropical storm are now incubating inside a secure Long Beach facility, with wildlife officials expecting the first hatchlings to emerge in early November. Teams moved the eggs from nests in Seal Beach and Huntington Beach to the Aquarium of the Pacific on Sept. 25, racing hazardous surf, erosion and flooding that threatened to wipe the nests out entirely.
The rescue, which the Los Angeles Times covered in detail on Sept. 25 before MyNewsLA reported on it Oct. 23, came together fast. Seal Beach and Huntington Beach experienced high surf and standing water near the nests after Tropical Storm Rachel, which followed Hurricane Polo, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service representative, and the storms caused severe damage to homes on the Long Beach Peninsula. A representative for the agency said the nests might have been inundated and destroyed by storm surge had crews not acted when they did.
Teams began excavating the nests around dawn on Sept. 25, according to the same agency account. A Seal Beach team removed 104 eggs while a Huntington Beach team recovered 100, and the Orange County Register reported that two teams headed out at 6 a.m. to excavate a total of 204 eggs. Officials determined the eggs came from two different turtles, based on differences in body shapes and shell patterns, as scientists later told KTLA.
Two Nests, Days Apart
Officials discovered the first nest near the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge on Sept. 16, and an olive ridley turtle laid a second clutch near the Huntington Beach Pier three days later, on Sept. 19. An interagency team identified the nests as the first confirmed natural sea turtle nests on the U.S. West Coast, though outlets have described the milestone with slightly different geographic framing — the Los Angeles Times called them the first known naturally occurring nests on the U.S. West Coast, while the Orange County Register called the find the first confirmed recording of natural sea turtle nests on the mainland West Coast of the United States…