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A gray whale breaches near the shore in Crystal Cove State Park on its southern migration. Credit: OARRA
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Well, we had a 'whaley' good year! As we breach into the new year, the OARRA crew can't help but reflect on our biggest year yet for survey trips, mortality responses, and outreach efforts.
Read on to see everything our team accomplished in 2023 and a look at what we have planned for 2024.
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Your support makes OARRA's conservation missions possible.
Our conservation and research work is kept afloat by the compassion, curiosity, and enthusiasm of dedicated volunteers, donors, collaborators, and citizen scientists.
Please consider contributing to OARRA this month to help give the marine animals of Southern California a voice through OARRA's research and response programs. 100% of your generous donation will directly benefit our:
Donating to OARRA's programs is now available through Aplos and Venmo.
Every donation makes an incredible difference. We are thankful down to the oceanic depths for your support! Donations are 100% tax-deductible.
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This quarter, OARRA also relaunched our marine mercantile and program wish lists! Though stocking stuffer season is at an end, it's never too late to shop to support ocean animal science. Gear up and represent cutting edge fieldwork and conservation with our merch store, give the gift of conservation with a sponsorship bundle to support our research and diagnostics, or directly contribute the equipment needed to monitor and necropsy animals or help train and educate ocean lovers in Southern California.
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An adult male California Sea Lion floats dreamily through the water column beneath a navigational buoy. Credit: OARRA
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Survey & Monitoring Program Recap:
In 2023, OARRA embarked on 42 Survey and Monitoring trips, visiting 689 sites. Our sightings in Los Angeles County and Orange County included:
- 5,420 Pinnipeds
- 4,899 California Sea Lions
- 521 Harbor Seals
- 8,415 Cetaceans
- 8,245 Common Dolphins
- 165 Bottlenose Dolphins
- 1 Humpback Whale
- 2 Gray Whales
- 1 Fin Whale
- 1 Blue Whale
- 122 Flipper Tag Sightings Reported
- 14 Pelican Band Sightings Reported
- 41 Entanglements Reported
- 18 Injuries/Shark Bites Reported
Explore sighting details, photos, and data maps online on OARRA's website.
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Even on dedicated marine mammal barges, animals are not safe from fishery interactions. This yearling California sea lion languished alone with a severe entanglement in Redondo Beach's King Harbor. Credit: OARRA
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This year, we averaged one life-threatening entanglement sighting for almost every single survey trip we performed, sometimes documenting several entanglements in a single day. Monitoring marine animal populations for these impacts is critical, especially cases in remote populations that would otherwise go undocumented and unreported. OARRA aims to empower our alliances in rescue and rehabilitation to intervene for individual animals and to inform a greater understanding of the incidence rate, severity, and distribution of entanglements in local populations.
Though large commercial operations and industry must be held accountable for some types of entanglements, many of the cases we see are caused by the irresponsible disposal of debris by the public. Entanglement is a terrible and preventable way to live and die for all kinds of marine wildlife. Please be sure to collect and properly dispose of entanglement threats like fishing line, nets, and packing bands! Your actions can be the matter of life and death for an animal like this yearling sea lion.
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Orange-tagged California sea lion W5833 hauls out on the bulbous bow of a ship in the Port of LA. Credit: OARRA
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Have you spotted a flipper-tagged marine mammal? Citizen scientists like you can help OARRA and our alliances by reporting a tag sighting! These identifiers indicate animals that have been treated and released by rehabilitation facilities or marked for study by research teams. Monitoring tagged animals in the wild is critical to marine mammal science, management, and conservation.
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Reporting bird leg band sightings is also a crucial way you can help researchers and responders monitor individual animals' continued health and movement long after they've left a rehabilitation facility.
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Our bone saw is a critical piece of kit for thorough examination and processing of mortality cases. The skull of this adult male California sea lion also joined our educational collection this season. Credit: OARRA
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Mortality Response & Research Program Recap:
In 2023, OARRA responded to 129 marine animal mortalities in Los Angeles County:
- 98 Pinnipeds
- 93 California Sea Lions
- 3 Harbor Seals
- 2 Northern Elephant Seals
- 29 Cetaceans
- 23 Common Dolphins
- 3 Bottlenose Dolphins
- 1 Pygmy Sperm Whale
- 1 Risso's Dolphin
- 1 Unidentified Whale
- 2 Sea Turtles
- 1 Green Sea Turtle
- 1 Olive Ridley
Explore case details, photos, and data maps online on OARRA's website.
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An OARRA mortality response technician cradles the halved brain of a California sea lion in the field during a necropsy. Credit: OARRA
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As always, we are grateful to work with these animals in life and death; caretaking the gift of their bodies and giving voice to their stories through comprehensive examination, sampling, and analysis is a critical part of understanding the health of their populations and the threats they face in our oceans.
Please report marine mammal and sea turtle mortalities in Los Angeles County to OARRA's Marine Animal Mortality Response Hotline: ☎️ (949)-276-2237. Your reports ensure that every animal's story gets told.
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A regal California sea lion basks in the winter sun against a backdrop of stormy clouds and the Santa Monica Mountains in Marina del Rey. Credit: OARRA
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🌊Current Events:
The Southern California coast is always teeming with a complex network of marine seasons and cycles. What's going on in our local waters?
The end of one year and the beginning of the next brings a season of change and movement to many of us, and cetaceans are no exception. It's gray whale migration season! We look forward to seeing these wonderful whales hug the coast on their massive odyssey along the Pacific coastline to the warm waters of calving lagoons in Mexico. Southern California boasts some of the best places to see gray whales from the water or land; keep a lookout from our local marine terraces to witness one of the longest mammalian migrations on earth, or seek out a reputable and responsible charter company to search the seas for a spout.
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A gray whale flukes near shore at Crystal Cove State Park on an OARRA survey trip, a local whalewatching charter looking on in the distance. Credit: OARRA
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Gray whales are not the only visitors passing through our waters: an influx of orcas have taken Southern California by storm throughout December and January, comprised of several intersecting ecotypes. Events like these are fascinating indicators of oceanic conditions and prey animal populations. We look forward to continuing documentation of local species for possible behavioral changes and movement patterns as we monitor the duration of these transients' stay.
Tidepool enthusiasts must also rejoice; king tides are back throughout January and early February! These high highs and low lows are an excellent time to observe California's complex intertidal ecology and contribute to community science studies on sea level. OARRA's Survey & Monitoring Program frequently documents the movement and residency patterns of animals hauled out and resting in intertidal zones; some of the populated sites we monitor are completely submerged during high tides!
During high tides, consider contributing to the California Coastal Commission's King Tides Project. As always, practice safe tidepooling for you and the intertidal flora and fauna during these events: be aware of tide and weather forecasts, never turn your back to the ocean, and never pick up or abduct wildlife or parts of the natural landscape. Take only pictures and litter! Intertidal zones are also frequently utilized by larger marine fauna. If birds, pinnipeds, or other animals are making use of the region, please keep your distance. The locals get first dibs!
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OARRA volunteer Erica A. makes use of a telephoto lens while documenting harbor seals in Newport Beach. Credit: OARRA
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As always, please remember to Share the Shore and keep your distance from wildlife. These animals need plenty of space and security to thrive, as human interaction and interference is energetically expensive and often ends up acutely harmful. In the field, OARRA utilizes telephoto lenses and binoculars to observe marine animals in detail from an appropriate distance, and many of our photos are tightly cropped. Please respect wildlife's rights to an undisturbed environment and enjoy their natural behaviors from afar. Check out NOAA's Marine Life Viewing Guidelines to ensure wildlife safety.
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OARRA volunteer Heather H. scouts for sea life and records data aboard a survey trip in Los Angeles. Credit: OARRA
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OARRA's S.E.A. State:
2023 was an incredible year for our Service, Education, & Alliance work! We're so grateful for our many new and continuing collaborations and opportunities, and we look forward to much more to come in 2024. Here's a look at how we finished out the year.
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OARRA Founder & CEO Keith Matassa and OARRA volunteer and California Wildlife Center Marine Program Manager Heather H. attend the Greater Atlantic Region Stranding Conference in Delaware. Credit: The National Aquarium.
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In September, OARRA representatives attended the Greater Atlantic Region Stranding Conference in Delaware! We connected with our bicoastal collaborators and workshopped ongoing response and research efforts with network partners through continued oil spill training workshops, stations of learning about proactive environmental disaster preparation, exploring new PPE options for field responders, reviewing Incident Command System forms for large scale response efforts, studying HPAI spillover events and transmission in marine wildlife, and more. We're excited to continue implementing this valuable information in our regional operations on the West Coast.
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OARRA Founder & CEO Keith Matassa presents our live Data Mapping Project to Orange Coast College Marine Mammal Research Group students. Credit: OARRA
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In early October, OARRA had the opportunity to appear at a meeting for Orange Coast College's Marine Mammal Research Group and discuss all things stranding and surveys with a dedicated group of marine science student researchers. We are excited about student projects underway and look forward to continuing our relationship with the group through data sharing and mentorship opportunities.
Through recruiting these brilliant new researchers at OCC, the OARRA volunteer and intern force has also grown significantly in our Survey & Monitoring and Mortality Response Programs. Welcome aboard, crew! We can't wait to learn alongside you and help you dive into marine animal field studies in spring semester.
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OARRA Founder & CEO Keith Matassa presents to a full house at the Aquarium of the Pacific's 4th Annual California Community Science Symposium. Credit: OARRA
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Later in October, OARRA also gave a presentation at the Aquarium of the Pacific's 4th Annual California Community Science Symposium about our collaborative research and data sharing projects with WatchSpotter. Check out our open access data mapping project at our website! We were incredibly grateful to share our work and hear from many other wonderful organizations about their projects in California. It's heartening to see just how many hands are on deck for wildlife research and conservation across many sectors of public life, and we're dedicated to educating and involving the public in ocean conservation and advocacy.
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OARRA attends an oil spill drill in New York. Credit: NOAA Fisheries New England/Mid-Atlantic.
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A meeting years in the making for our team, OARRA also helped to plan, facilitate, and attend the GARFO Network Disaster/Oil Spill Planning Meeting in New York in early December with many members of regional and national marine mammal and sea turtle stranding networks in order to workshop and collaborate on protocols and action plans for disaster response and mitigation. Thank you to our alliance, the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society, and other hosts for facilitating this event. With the oil industry looming large along the Southern California coastline and a dire history of oiled wildlife impacts in our local waters, coordinating and planning for these terrible events is always on our minds.
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And as always, we are also incredibly grateful to our NOAA West Coast Stranding Network partners and the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches & Harbors for their continued collaboration and support. We couldn't do this work without you as allies in ocean animal science!
If you are interested in outreach, education, collaboration, and press opportunities with OARRA, please contact us at info@oarra.org. We're excited to expand our community and offer new opportunities to get involved with ocean animal science!
What else do we have planned for the new year? Explore our 2024 Conservation Resolutions for a sneak peek at how OARRA is growing.
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The left foreflipper of California sea lion OARRA-23-121-Zc (W5192) hangs over the edge of oil platform Esther, where he hauled out and died. Credit: OARRA
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California sea lion OARRA-23-121-Zc (W5192) strands, deceased and decomposed, among intertidal rocks near Point Fermin. Credit: OARRA
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Sighting Spotlight:
For a majority of the cases our Mortality Response Program examines, our familiarity with each animal's life history starts from scratch when we arrive to the stranding site. Exceptions to this general rule yield productive insights into an animal's life and death, stranding patterns, and the efficacy of rehabilitation.
That's why California Sea Lion OARRA-23-121-Zc (W5192) is our Sighting Spotlight of the Month.
When OARRA initially sighted this deceased animal alone on oil platform Esther on a routine survey and monitoring trip out of Huntington Beach, we were unable to secure and examine it due to its precarious location. Imagine our mortality responders' surprise when this same animal was reported stranded on shore... five days later, and north of its original sighting location on a remote beach near Point Fermin.
The presence of a legible flipper tag on this animal not only provided known medical history associated with his original stranding and rehabilitation upon verification, but a unique opportunity to profile the movement of this particular carcass in nearshore currents and gyres. A dead animal can 'move' much more than one might anticipate. Resighting a mortality case helps illustrate how floating mortalities of certain localities can end up stranding along other features of our coastal geography, bearing implications for tracking the providence of fatal incidents, disease transmission, contaminant concentrations, and more.
You can help report sightings of both flipper tags and dead strandings. Deceased, tagged animals are of particular interest. Keep your sights on the shore for opportunities to contribute to our Survey & Monitoring and Mortality Response work.
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Thank you for your support!
"Sea" you soon!
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