As the Pacific Ocean continues to simmer, Southern California’s waters could get considerably stranger before this season’s Super El Niño runs its course.
Oceanographers are anticipating a major reshuffling of marine life as exceptionally warm Pacific waters push northward, potentially bringing tropical and subtropical species into California waters where they are rarely seen.
Among the more bizarre possibilities is the yellow-bellied sea snake, a highly venomous species that normally inhabits tropical waters throughout the Pacific and Indian oceans.
“Some of these kinds of interesting oddities that are never a part of California will become part of this temporarily tropical El Niño-heated California,” said Douglas McCauley, director of the Benioff Ocean Initiative at UC Santa Barbara, in an interview with USA Today.
Southern California sightings are extraordinarily rare for the venomous snake. The specimen found in Newport Beach in January 2018 was only the fifth documented yellow-bellied sea snake in Southern California since 1972. Its typical range extends north to roughly Baja California, with warmer waters farther south providing its preferred habitat.
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Unsurprisingly, three of the previous California sightings occurred during the powerful 2015-16 El Niño. However, the 2018 Newport Beach snake was particularly unusual because it appeared outside an El Niño event at the time.
Sea snakes aren’t the only tropical visitors that could turn up.
Hammerhead sharks have also been known to push north during El Niño. NOAA says tropical species including hammerheads and whale sharks have already made northerly appearances off Southern California during recent warm-water conditions. This year, unusually early catches of dorado and yellowfin tuna are another indication that tropical species may already be shifting north.
Hammerheads are normally associated with warmer tropical and subtropical waters, making a Southern California appearance notable—but not unprecedented. During the powerful 2015 El Niño, multiple hammerheads were spotted off the California coast.
There were even two bites attributed to hammerheads that year off the CA coast.
The coming months could thus produce some unusual sightings.
To put it simply: California’s normally temperate Pacific could temporarily become a little more tropical.
And that could mean some very strange things washing ashore. Keep your eyes peeled for that yellow venomous snake cruising SoCal lineups in the coming months.
Related: ‘Double the Sharks’: Southern California Faces El Niño-Fueled Great White Frenzy
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