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May 26, 2025 14 mins

Harmful algal blooms are wreaking havoc along the California coast, releasing toxic domoic acid that is poisoning marine life. In this episode, we explore how this naturally occurring toxin is causing mass die-offs in sea lions, dolphins, and seabirds, and why climate change and nutrient pollution may be making these blooms worse. You’ll hear about the science behind domoic acid, its neurological effects on animals, and how it mimics epilepsy symptoms in marine mammals.

Domoic acid poisoning is becoming a more frequent and devastating threat to ocean ecosystems, pushing wildlife rescue centers to their limits. We discuss the broader implications of this crisis on marine conservation efforts and public health, and what we can do to protect vulnerable species as ocean temperatures rise. This is not just a marine science issue—it’s an urgent conservation challenge that demands our attention.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:00:00):
(upbeat music)
On today's episode of the How
to Protect the Ocean podcast,
we're gonna be talking about a story
that has to do with damoic acid.
You're probably
wondering what is damoic acid?
It's actually something
that causes marine mammals
to die off the Pacific West Coast

(01:00:20):
or the West Coast of North America.
We're gonna be talking
about what's happened happening
to sea lions, dolphins,
and other marine mammals,
and seabirds that is causing a lot of
people some concern.
We're gonna talk about
that on today's episode
of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
So let's get into it.

(01:00:42):
Hey everybody, my name is Andrew Lewin.
Welcome to the How to
Protect the Ocean podcast.
I'm your host.
And this is the
podcast where you find out
what's happening with the ocean,
how you can speak up for the ocean,
and what you can do to
live for a better ocean
by taking action.
On today's episode,
we're gonna be talking about
damoic acid and why this toxic algae
is causing damoic acid to

(01:01:03):
actually affect the lives
of sea lions, marine
mammals, and other marine mammals,
such as dolphins and whales,
and how this has been
going on for a lot longer
than it has before.
Four years ago, we started
to detect this toxic algae
in the waters off the Pacific Coast,

(01:01:24):
off the West Coast of North America,
in particular California,
and that's caused a lot
of concern for some people.
And we want to talk about it today,
because I want to kind of go through
and discuss a little bit about what this
is all about, right?
Just to talk about what damoic acid is
and how it affects the body.

(01:01:45):
The damoic acid is a neurotoxin produced
by certain algal blooms,
particularly those involving
algae of the pseudonicisia.
I think I pronounced that properly.
When these blooms occur,
the toxin can accumulate in small fish
like sardines and anchovies,
and then marine mammals,
such as sea lions and dolphins,

(01:02:05):
will consume these
fish leading to poisoning,
it leads to bioaccumulation.
So these tiny, tiny
fish will have a little bit
of this neurotoxin, this algae in it,
because that's what it eats,
and then that gets eaten
by larger marine mammals,
such as sea lions and dolphins.
They start to accumulate
as they eat many, many fish.

(01:02:26):
They start to accumulate
that toxin in the body,
and it starts to get really, really bad,
and it starts to lead to poisoning.
So the affected animals exhibit symptoms
like disorientation,
lethargy, and seizures.
Some display even
behavior known as stargazing,
where they tilt their
heads back and gaze upwards,
telltale sign of damoic acid poisoning.

(01:02:49):
So in recent months, these are months,
not just a couple of weeks,
the situation has escalated.
Rescue centers, such as the California,
off the California coast,
as the Marine Mammal
Center, are overwhelmed.
The Marine Mammal Care
Center in Los Angeles,
for instance, has been
inundated with cases,
hundreds of cases.
David Bader, which you're

(01:03:09):
gonna hear from in a video
that I've got queued up in a little bit,
he's a marine biologist at the center,
reported that there have been over 70
animals in their care
just in that particular location,
most suffering from
damoic acid poisoning.
So this is a big
problem that's happening.
I wanna play the video to
give you a little bit more.
It's affecting sea lions, dolphins,

(01:03:30):
and you're gonna see in this clip,
it actually is affecting
birds as well, sea birds as well.
So we're gonna hear a
little bit about it.
So just, I'm gonna just talk about,
I'm gonna queue it up here.
Oops.
Still getting used to the software.
All right, let's just queue it up.
Here we go.

(01:03:50):
Struggling what this
toxin does to these animals
and what environmental
factors could be contributing
to these algae blooms
that we've been seeing.
Damoic acid is a neurotoxin.
It affects obviously
nerves, brain functions,
and organ function as well.
It causes things like seizures.
You saw that a pelican

(01:04:11):
kind of weaving its head.
So, you know,
repetitive behaviors like that.
We see that in sea lions as well.
Unfortunately, it can also cause death.
This particular boom has
been particularly legal
for local marine life.
Sea birds, dolphins, and
sea lions have been impacted.
It's been going on
about 10 weeks right now.

(01:04:33):
We believe that, you know,
ocean conditions are
changing because of climate change,
ocean acidification,
and the vitrification
of our coastal ocean.
We're shifting the ocean's chemistry,
and it's favoring these formations of
these kinds of blooms.
What contributes to it?
Is there anything from our recent
wildfires and some of the debris that's

(01:04:53):
ended up in the water that's
contributing to this as well?
So the major driving factors of this,
again, are climate
change, ocean acidification,
but also neutrification.
So runoff, any kind of runoff, is going
to contribute to these blooms.
The fires certainly had, you
know, maybe some nutrients,
excess nutrients
coming in from, you know,

(01:05:14):
possibly the fire retardants
might have had some of that.
All runoff though
contributes nutrients to the ocean.
And this is actually year four of a
massive bloom just like this.
So the fires might have
contributed a little bit,
but the major driving factors are beyond
just that one event.
So this is something we really need to be

(01:05:35):
paying attention to.
If we've entered the fourth
year now, I see, you know,
some of your workers here
trying to care for these animals.
Can you just talk about what type of
impact this has, you
know, even on your center?
Yeah, well, on the center, we budget in a
year for 300 patients
over the course of a year.

(01:05:55):
We're just now in April and we've already
seen over 300 patients.
So impacts on us are certainly financial.
I'm just going to stop it there because,
you know, we get the picture
in terms of what's happening.
I'm going to put a link in the show notes
if you want to support the
Marine Mammal Care Center,
because I think it's really important.

(01:06:15):
You mentioned there that financial
resources are tight because there have
been so many animals.
They only have a certain amount of
funding and they can only
handle what they budget for.
And they don't budget for this type of
incident, especially an
incident that lasts so, so long.
Normally when you get toxic algae blooms,
like red algal blooms, you get, it lasts

(01:06:36):
maybe for a few weeks, maybe a month.
This has been happening
for over a couple of months.
We're probably into the third or fourth
month that has been happening.
And we're starting to see more and more
animals die in the care and more and more
animals being
affected along the coastline.
So, you know, the root causes you talked
about is not only harmful algal blooms,
but they're complex.

(01:06:56):
Climate change plays a significant role.
Essentially how these algal blooms form
is because of the heat in the water.
The temperature of the water allows for
these toxic algal blooms to form in ways
that we've never seen before.
Right. We haven't seen this amount and
this, this length in a long time when you
have algal blooms or you have algae that

(01:07:19):
feed off of temperature off of a specific
amount of nutrients like
nitrates and phosphates.
And this is what happens essentially. You

(01:07:40):
just get this perfect combination of
conditions. Sea surface temperatures up,
you get nutrient runoff, enough of
nutrient runoff to
support a bloom of this algae.
It's just a plant and it blooms. And then
what happens is it just blooms so much
that eventually they all die off and they

(01:08:00):
come to the shore or they get eaten by
sardines. They get eaten by sea lions.
They get eaten by dolphins and so forth
and seabirds. And then those start to
die. Those are the triggers and sort of
the indicators of what's happening.
They are the canary in the coal mine when
it comes to these toxic algal blooms.
Now we're lucky that we have testing with
fisheries. So shellfish and other fish so

(01:08:23):
that we don't get the humans who ingest
seafood that would get affected by this
don't get poisoned because
testing is really important.
But sometimes that testing fails and you
get people who have democ acid toxicity
and they can die from it. It has happened
before or less now because
we know what to look for.
But especially cases like this, I'm sure
it's affecting the seafood industry along

(01:08:44):
the shore. So it's affecting the economy.
It's affecting the health of the animals.
It's potentially
affecting the health of people.
And it's something that you don't want to
be around with all these dead animals
coming up on shore. All these affected
animals. Not only is it heartbreaking to
watch, but it's really difficult as
someone who's carrying just like David
here, who's carrying the
people who are caring for them.
They're watching these animals

(01:09:06):
essentially die and suffer when they
before they die. It's not an easy thing
as a care professional to be able to see.
And this is something that needs to stop.
How do we stop it? This is four years in
a row that we've seen this type of stuff
go on. Not something that's easy to stop.
Unfortunately, we could limit nutrient

(01:09:27):
runoff, but at point sources, which is
mean like there's a pipe and that
nutrient goes off. We can limit that by testing what's at the end of the day.
But then you have non point source. You
have non and appoint or end of pipe
sources where it just comes in from
anywhere. And that could be anything that
comes in. They're very difficult to
monitor. It's very difficult to find out
what's happening. You'd have to come up
with a whole coastal monitoring system to

(01:09:48):
identify where these high phosphates,
high nitrates are coming in. And those
are the limiting factors to have this
algae grow. But really, sea surface
temperature increase, you can't control
unless you start to reduce climate
change, which is going to take along a very, very long time.
So this is a problem that's going to
happen more and more as we as climate
change gets worse or as climate change

(01:10:09):
continues to wreak its ugly head. And we
are going to have this problem. We are
going to see more animals die. We're
going to see the consequences in our
water systems, the consequences in our
shorelines, because we're going to see
den animals come in. We've seen it happen
in Florida where people go to the beach
during these times and this just smells of death. Not a human being.

(01:10:30):
It can affect people with breathing
problems. It can affect people in terms
of rotting flesh that's on the ground,
rotting skin, rotting animals. Not good
to breathe in. And it's something that we
have to monitor. We have to be careful
of. And we're not going to be able to go
to certain beaches at certain times
because of so much death happening and

(01:10:51):
water quality not being good.
Water quality is something that I feel
like here in North America, we take it
for granted. It's not something that once
it gets out of control, it's really
difficult to monitor. Not monitor, but to
kind of get back to normal because
especially in a large system like the
ocean, you just don't know
where things are coming from.
And so we have to make sure that we

(01:11:13):
control with what we can control and
control it now. That comes with
government action. That comes with
businesses and the private sector action.
And that comes with people really taking
climate change seriously, putting people
in, voting people in power that really
take climate change and reduction of
climate change seriously, because we are
going to see these

(01:11:33):
consequences all of the time.
Increase the surface temperatures
directly related to climate change. We're
seeing this increase all the time. And
this has happened four years in a row.
Democas is happening long. Like this
toxicity is happening longer and longer
every year. And this is not going to stop
until we get climate change under
control. Not a fun story to share. It's

(01:11:54):
not something that I wanted to share, but
it's something that I
feel like we need to watch.
We need to make sure that sea lions like
this one is, you know, under is safe and
it can enjoy eating sardines and eating
other and like fish like anchovies
without having to worry about being sick.
This is what they eat.

(01:12:14):
And, you know, we've protected sea lions
before with the man with the Magnus
Carter Carter law. I think it's the
fishing fisheries law that we have and
brought sea lions back together, which
helped bring great white shark
populations back. And these are animals
that we need to protect. And now that
there's a water quality issue, this is
really it's going to be a lot harder to

(01:12:35):
protect. And we're really going to have
to watch how we treat water quality in
the future. And it's something that is
not going to be easy to do because it works.
Just a few things could
be too different for..."

(01:13:14):
we need to talk about because sometimes
talking about the ocean and
looking at ocean conservation
is not easy and we have to attack it.
Some of the things that you can do to
make it better is stay
informed, keep a rest of
what's happening and local advisories
about algal blooms and affected areas.
You can volunteer at the Marine Mammal
Center if they require
it, if they need the help.
You can support the rescue efforts by

(01:13:36):
considering donating to the
organizations like the Marine
Mammal Care Center.
And of course, you
can advocate for change.
So support policies aimed at reducing
carbon emissions and controlling
agricultural runoff.
So every action counts.
You don't have to just choose one.
You can choose all of them, staying
informed and staying involved.
And then of course, we can all contribute
to the health of our
oceans and the creatures
that inhabit them like sea lions,

(01:13:57):
dolphins and seabirds,
something those predators are
important to our ecosystem.
It's important to keep those food webs
healthy and maintain those to help
maintain our coastlines
and maintain the oceans health, which
helps maintain our health.
So that's it for today's episode.
If you have any questions or comments and
you're watching this on
YouTube, leave a comment
below.
If you are wanting to get a hold of me,

(01:14:19):
you can go to
speakupforblue.com, fill out the
contact page, go to speakupforblue.com
forward slash contact,
fill out the page, it goes
right directly to my email or you can DM
me on Instagram at how
to protect the ocean.
That's out at how to protect the ocean.
So if you want to get a hold of me,
here's the sheet so you can do so.
But I want to thank you so much for
listening to this episode

(01:14:40):
of the how to protect the
ocean podcast.
Have a great day.
We'll talk to you next
time and happy conservation.
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