TINA FAHY: I think it's only recently that we've really realized that green sea turtles are coming this far up the river. MARGOLIS: Tina Fahy, NOAA's West Coast sea turtle recovery coordinator, took me to a spot in the river where the vegetation ends and the giant concrete walls begin. Now it's pretty much a common sight, whether it's in Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge or Bolsa Chica or in San Gabriel River. SEMINOFF: Twenty years ago, to talk about turtles up in Orange County was unheard of. And with their numbers growing, they're expanding into new spots. But unlike other species of turtles, the green turtles near LA tend to live closer to the coast, reducing the risk of accidental bycatch and ship strikes. MARGOLIS: Helping struggling animals isn't always that straightforward. SEMINOFF: It really does sort of distill down to the fact that if we don't eat them and we protect their nesting beaches, they're going to do quite fine. And in the past five years, their population has exploded here. But by the early '90s, Mexico had taken new steps to protect them. Their population was cratering - in part because they and their eggs were being harvested on their nesting beaches in Mexico. The green sea turtles here in Southern California were listed under the Endangered Species Act in the 1970s. MARGOLIS: There are different populations of green sea turtles around the world, and many of them are either endangered or threatened - often due to habitat loss, ship strikes and accidentally getting caught by fishermen. You know, less than 1 in 100 hatchlings typically make it to adulthood. SEMINOFF: They'll get picked off by ghost crabs or raccoons or birds or fish. MARGOLIS: Jeffrey Seminoff is a turtle researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. JEFFREY SEMINOFF: The vast majority of those animals are not the lucky ones. Green sea turtles like this one are often born on a beach about 1,600 miles away, in Michoacan, Mexico, where masses of these turtles pop out of their shells all at once and start scurrying towards the water.
And you've got to go down these huge concrete embankments just to get to the water.īut when you do, sure enough, within no time at all, gliding just beneath the murky surface. I mean, there's people speeding by on the 605 freeway. JACOB MARGOLIS, BYLINE: Given how the San Gabriel River looks, it's tough to imagine that it's hosting what's likely one of the largest gatherings of sea turtles in Southern California. Jacob Margolis from LAist has this story. But a very different story is playing out right now just south of Los Angeles here, where those turtles are coming back in a major way - right in the middle of suburbia, in the San Gabriel River. Often, when we tell stories about animals, it's about how badly they're doing, which was the case for green sea turtles on the West Coast not all that long ago.
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