Green sea turtle in the San Gabriel River | Photo: Eric Austin Yee
Another story in our series on citizen science in California, as part of Redefines celebration of Citizen Science Day on April 16.
Its a warm Saturday in Long Beach and a group of folks have gathered on a small spit of land between the San Gabriel River and a narrow channel that diverts water from the coast into a power plant. Their mission? To count sea turtles.
Despite a fair amount of news coverage in recent years, many folks are still surprised to find out that green sea turtles, Chelonia mydas, also confusingly known as black sea turtles, range as far north as Los Angeles. Theyre usually thought of as a more tropical species; you can snorkel with them in Hawaii, and they lay their eggs on sandy Mexican beaches.
But theres a group of sea turtles that can be found all year long right here in the brackish waters at the bottom of the San Gabriel River. And the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific has assembled a dedicated group of volunteer citizen scientists to study them.
--
--
Once a vast coastal wetland where the fresh water flowing from the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers met the ocean, much of the landscape has given way to manicured lawns, parking lots, and concrete. Despite the ecological turnover, the rivers still wind their way through the southland and dump into the Pacific, and many of the wild animals that live alongside continue to persist.
Some think that the sea turtles have made a home here for a very peculiar reason. On each side of the river sits a power plant. To keep their equipment cool, the plants suck up cold salty seawater and, after theyre done with it, they flush it back into the river. This creates a sort of artificially warm habitat, perfect for marine reptiles like the turtles.
But NOAA Fisheries biologist Dan Lawson, who helps oversee the sea turtle monitoring effort here, isnt so sure. Its possible, he says, that sea turtles have always come up to Los Angeles. Sea turtles are common in the Bolsa Chica wetlands just to the south, after all, and some suspect that Native Americans like the Tongva and Chumash were aware of local sea turtles before European people arrived in Southern California.
Whether or not sea turtles were present in Long Beach before the power plants heated things up, theyre certainly here now. Citizen scientist Celeste Hassler recalls counting 42 turtle heads one day, and even if that included some repeats, its an indication that its not just a few wayward individuals. Over the last few years, Lawson has caught and assessed about fifty turtles, with only a handful of recaptures.
And theyre all turtle teenagers. With the smallest river-dwelling turtles being at least as large as a dinner plate, theyre not newly hatched infants, but theyre also not adults of breeding age. They may be using the river as a fairly safe space to avoid becoming lunch for a hungry sea lion while they wait to mature. Since all the animals are of the same age class, that means there are constantly newcomers entering the river and long-term residents who pack up and move. Nobody knows quite how many are here at one time. Radio trackers revealed that some turtles spend all of their time in the river, but a few venture out to sea during the day and return at night, to rest.
Until a few years ago, the presence of turtles in the four or five miles of river that retains its natural, soft bottom was a fairly well kept secret, the stuff of rumors. But once a bike path was laid out alongside the river, more folks had more opportunities to spot a turtle coming to the surface of the murky water to fill its lungs with air.
Indeed, as I stand near the bike path with Lawson and Cassandra Davis, the aquariums volunteer coordinator, scanning the greenish-brown water for signs of (non-avian) life, cyclist after cyclist shouts seen any turtles yet? or how many turtles so far? as they whiz on by. Thanks also to the rise of social media, the turtles have attained pseudo-celebrity status, at least in the neighborhood. Theyre not quite as internationally newsworthy as P-22, but theyre far more exciting to many than the more humdrum, introduced red-eared sliders that can be found just about anywhere.
To wit: when it was first reported it was thought that they were red-eared sliders, says Davis. But once folks from the aquarium verified that they were indeed sea turtles, two projects started up almost immediately, independently of each other. In one, researchers from CSU-Long Beach placed radio transmitters on turtles in an effort to chart their daily movements. The second was the aquariums citizen science-based monitoring effort. The two in tandem helped us to figure out more about the population than we would have with either study on its own, she says.
One Saturday each month, volunteers meet up and then disperse across ten different observation points along a two-mile span of the river. Its the sort of herculean effort that would be nearly impossible to achieve without relying upon volunteers like Hassler, a music teacher. Shes been volunteering on the project for nearly three years. Sea turtle monitoring, she decided, was a perfect activity for her and her then eleven-year-old twin sons, both of whom were already interested in animals. Both now want to go into some form of oceanography as a career, she says, something for which she at least partially credits the hours scanning for sea turtles as an inspiration. As for her, shes thrilled to participate in an activity that actively contributes to scientific knowledge building. One of the beauties of this program is that people who have an interest but no training can actually become part of the [scientific] process, she says.
Training sea turtle observers on the San Gabriel River | Photo: Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific
Its this continuous obser
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Green sea turtle in the San Gabriel River | Photo: Eric Austin Yee 
