Martin Daly and the Indies Trader have worked the Marshall Islands out of Majuro for years, so the crew knows what a normal season looks like. They’re now describing anything but. In a recent post, the operation said the trade winds, which have blown from the northeast for as long as anyone there can remember, have been running southwest to northwest for four months. They called it unprecedented and put it down to the super El Niño. Every atoll, they explained, is settled around the prevailing wind, so flipping it is causing havoc. Yachts, longliners and workboats are on the beach, the power keeps cutting out, and roofs and trees are down. Their verdict on the surf was one line: it’s going to be an interesting season.
An El Niño year in the Marshalls typically brings weaker trades with the odd westerly burst, storms that form closer to the islands, and a higher cyclone risk. Four straight months of reversed flow is the crew’s own account, and it goes well beyond the occasional westerly the forecasts describe. Or, shit’s getting weird.
The same signal is turning up across the Pacific, in a lineup near you if you live in Southern California. A fisherman pulled a longfinned bigeye, a bright red-orange fish that normally lives off Mexico and Baja, from the Venice Fishing Pier, and the species had never before been recorded in California waters. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County kept the specimen. Curator Bill Ludt says it’s likely only the start.
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An endangered olive ridley sea turtle crawled out near Seal Beach in September and buried a clutch of eggs, the first time a sea turtle has nested in California. Another turtle was seen nesting near Huntington Beach Pier, and officials fenced off both sites. The guest list reads like a Baja trip report: a whale shark near the Channel Islands, plus hammerheads, mahi mahi and bullet tuna. Anglers around Marina del Rey and Santa Monica say they’re landing species and sizes rarely seen locally.
The heat behind it was building before El Niño even showed up. The world’s oceans absorbed a record amount of heat in 2025, with the heat stored increasing by about 23 zettajoules, roughly equal to nearly four decades of global primary energy use. That was the ninth straight record year for heat in the top 2,000 metres, and it happened under weak La Niña conditions. Then the Pacific flipped. June was already the warmest June on record in the tropical Pacific, and on August 22, Copernicus recorded a global sea surface temperature of 21.1°C, edging past the previous record. NOAA gave California and Baja 80–100% odds of marine heatwave conditions. Marine heatwaves covered 37% of the world’s oceans in July, and NOAA says that could reach 45% this winter, potentially the highest on record.
NOAA’s latest update, on October 8, says El Niño is still intensifying, with an 83% chance of a historically exceptional event between October and December, potentially stronger than anything in records dating back to 1950.
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And this week, the first real storm of the season landed. Tropical Storm Rachel came ashore in northern Baja on October 10, then pushed flooding and damaging surf into Southern California. Waves battered homes and wrecked a boardwalk on the Alamitos Peninsula in Long Beach, flood warnings ran from San Diego to the Bay Area, and rockslides closed some roads. Baja took the worst of it, with more than 400 emergency calls in three days. You can’t pin a single storm on El Niño, but the warm water helps feed the eastern Pacific cyclone season, which is running at record levels this year. Forecasters are calling Rachel a preview, with record rain, big surf and mudslides likely over the coming months.
Until now, the ocean has mostly been showing you the signs, from Majuro to Venice Pier. Rachel suggests the storms and swells are next. El Niño is coming. What it does, well, we are about to find out.
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