The bodies of sea mammals are washing up on Los Angeles County beaches at such an alarming rate that caretaker groups say that a toxic wave of algae causing this horrific phenomenon is resulting in more deaths than  in any other year on record.

Nonprofits who are seeing high mortality rates for elephant seals, sea lions, dolphins, pelicans and other sea birds since February are responding to so many calls of sick and dying sea creatures on popular beaches that they’ve already burned through their yearly budgets.

In response to the crisis, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, May 6, voted to augment the budget of the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro, a group authorized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to respond to marine mammals in distress along the coast from Long Beach to Malibu.

A motion co-authored by Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice Hahn was adopted by a 5-0 vote and authorized up to $700,000 for the MMCC. That breaks down into an immediate infusion of $100,000, followed by up to $600,000 in future funds from the upcoming 2025-2026 fiscal year budget.

The amount of funding from the next year’s budget was amended to say “up to” $600,000 by Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who is concerned about county budget cutbacks affecting the grant. Also, a second Mitchell amendment called for all coastal cities, county state and federal representatives and other groups to meet about the crisis and find other sources of money for the nonprofit.

Waves of toxic algae started earlier than usual, in February, along the coast of Southern California, possibly caused by warmer ocean temperatures due to global climate change, the county reported. Another theory is that the debris from the Palisades and Eaton fires prompted the algae bloom. The algae produces two toxins poisoning sea life: domoic acid, which can cause gastrointestinal and neurological issues, and saxitoxin, which can be deadly, marine experts reported.

There have been reports of sickened sea lions becoming aggressive, attacking surfers and beach goers in the sand in Newport Beach. The supervisors said the sickening of sea creatures with Domoic Acid Toxicosis can be a public health hazard.

“This domoic acid affects the brain. These animals don’t know what they are doing,” said Keith Matassa, founder and CEO of the Ocean Animal Response and Research Alliance (OARRA), which goes out on calls of sick and dying sea mammals throughout LA County’s 20 beaches.

OARRA, founded in 2020, normally sees 129 dead sea creatures in L.A. County a year. As of May 6, the group has attended to 273 animal mortalities — more than double its normal yearly number, Matassa said. His group does necropsies on these, mostly sea lions and dolphins. “The general conclusion was they are all dead from domoic acid,” he said.

The beaches where most of the dead sea mammals are found include: the beach at Marina del Ray; Dockweiler, El Segundo, Hermosa, Redondo and beaches in Torrance and the Palos Verdes area, Matassa said.

Although domoic acid algae blooms have occurred for the past four years, with the previously worst outbreak in July 2023, this toxic algae bloom is the first attributed to the death of two whales.

Domoic poisoning was confirmed as the cause of death of a humpback whale found dead in Huntington Beach in January and in a minke whale that that was swimming in Long Beach’s Rainbow Harbor but later washed up dead on the shore of the Los Angeles River in April.

“We are in week 11 of this crisis and it is not showing signs of abating,” Horvath said. She applauded the yeoman’s like work of the Marine Mammal Care Center staff who wrap the sick sea mammal and take it to their hospital in San Pedro. Sometimes a rescue can take hours.

The MMCC has responded to 2,200 calls from its hotline in March alone. The volume is very high as compared to its annual average of 4,000 calls, Horvath said.

One volunteer at the center, Courtney Cronin, told the board she had never seen so many ocean mammal deaths on Southern California beaches. “And it is just awful for anyone unlucky enough to witness them dying.”

Horvath said the crisis is affecting lifeguards, who can spend an hour with a suffering dolphin. The county has made available mental health counseling to the lifeguards who are not trained to deal with this crisis.

“It has taken a toll, from the trauma, on our lifeguards,” said Hahn. “And seeing them (dead sea animals) can be traumatic to beachgoers.”

Matassa and his crews have experienced emotional trauma during these last few months, he said.

“We have a lot of younger volunteers. It is hard on them. It is hard on lifeguards to watch these animals die because it is horrible and it happens over and over again — multiple times a day,” he said.

Also, the toxic bloom could be contaminating shellfish caught by non-commercial sports fishing and should not be eaten because it doesn’t undergo treatment as does commercially caught shellfish, according to a recent health warning. The presence of domoic acid in shellfish can cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea at lower doses, and seizures, coma and irreversible memory loss at higher doses, according to the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

John Warner, CEO of the MMCC, said his group can really use the money from the county to continue its work. “We are spending money outpacing what we are raising,” he said.

To donate to the Marine Mammal Care Center, go to the donations website: https://marinemammalcare.org/donate/.

SCNG staff writers Erika Ritchie, Laylan Connelly and Hannah Kang contributed to this report.