Dolphin strandings are taking a toll on L.A. County’s lifeguards

Spencer Parker has never seen so many dolphin strandings in his more than 20 years as an L.A. County lifeguard.

Since he started in 2002, only twice had he seen them come ashore before this year. But in just the last two weeks, there have been four.

Now, things have gotten so bad that L.A. County lifeguards have begun taking mental health days off to cope with the devastation as an algae bloom is poisoning and killing marine life from San Diego to Santa Barbara.

“We’re human beings and we have feelings and we care about marine life — that’s one of the reasons we chose this profession,” said Parker, a captain in the county Fire Department’s lifeguard division. “When these dolphins and sea lions come to shore and they’re still alive, we do our best to make them comfortable and sometimes it doesn’t work out and that takes a toll.”

The worst of the algae bloom’s damage appears to be in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, where some experts wonder if runoff from January’s firestorms has made the bloom worse. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the first effects of the bloom began to show up off the coast of Malibu around Feb. 20.

Since then, the bloom’s impact on wildlife including sea lions and dolphins has been “the worst thing we’ve ever seen and had to respond to … and there’s no end in sight,” said John Warner, chief executive of the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro.

Algal blooms can form due to low water circulation or after weather events like droughts, floods or hurricanes and can quickly proliferate in warm, nutrient-rich water, particularly if it’s loaded with phosphorus and nitrogen. As they grow, they can sap the water of oxygen, killing marine life and harming commercial fisheries, and poison the food chain for animals such as sea lions.

The bloom currently wreaking havoc off the coast produces a neurotoxin called domoic acid, which accumulates in small fish like sardines and anchovies. The small fish are then eaten in large quantities by marine life, including sea lions and dolphins, poisoning them.

Ingesting domoic acid from harmful algal blooms can cause animals to have seizures, crane their heads in a motion known as “stargazing,” or become comatose. Without warning, they can also become aggressive and lunge and bite.

According to the California Ocean Protection Council, algae blooms occurred in 2015, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

But this year’s bloom, experts say, is the worst. Animals are arriving in “horrendous shape” and with a high mortality rate compared with years past, Warner said.

In March, a “feral, almost demonic” sea lion attacked a surfer in Ventura County. This month, whales have died in Long Beach and Huntington Beach from the toxin and dozens of pelicans have become ill, with their offspring on the brink of starvation.

Newt Likier feeds some of the more than 70 sick brown pelicans at the Wetlands & Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach after helping to give them medication Friday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Since Jan. 1, the Marine Mammal Care Center has taken in 385 animals (including more than 300 sea lions) sickened by the neurotoxin, though it is only budgeted for around 300 animals for the entire year, Warner said. That total doesn’t include the more than 200 stranded dolphins (which almost always die from domoic acid poisoning) in L.A. County to whom the center has responded.

There, along the county’s coastline, lifeguards may be the first ones to spot the bloom’s latest victim. Warner said those discoveries, sometimes multiple ones in a day, take a toll.

“Lifeguards are breaking down crying on the beach,” he said. “This isn’t something they signed up for. They simply don’t have the resources to respond to this in a manner that would be humane and at the readiness levels that we all want to do and the public expects.”

Mary Blake gives a brown pelican fluids. The bird had been found ailing at a residence in Huntington Beach.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Experts say it’s difficult to know when the bloom, which occurs every three to seven years, will subside. Across Southern California, tens of thousands of marine animals, including marine birds, have been affected.

In Warner’s view, the severity of the bloom is a warning sign about the effects of human-caused climate change.

“This is the end of the debate about whether climate change is real,” Warner said. “There is nothing else that can explain this and I hope that is sinking in.”

In the coming weeks, rescuers are waiting to see if a group of humpback whales feeding in an algae bloom hotspot near the Channel Islands will become sick and come to shore.