A Second Sea Turtle Nested at Huntington Beach, Officials Say

Sea turtles had never been recorded nesting on the West Coast until the first nest turned up at Seal Beach.

A second sea turtle has nested on Orange County sand, just south of Tower 15 in Huntington Beach. That's about eight miles down the beach from the first nest, the Los Angeles Times reported. No sea turtle nest had ever been recorded on the West Coast before this month.

Both nests are now sitting under mesh. Marine safety officers with the Huntington Beach Fire Department brought in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and those agencies put a mesh hut over each nest, the Times reported.

The first turtle came ashore Sept. 16, on a strip of sand the Times placed "between the waves and the oceanfront condos on Surfside Avenue in Seal Beach."

The second sighting came three days after that, on Sept. 19. Neither outlet printed that date; both put the second turtle three days behind the first, so the arithmetic is ours.

The two accounts don't measure the distance the same way, either. KTLA, which reported the story with bylines from John Ross Ferrara and Chip Yost, put the second turtle a few miles south, near the Huntington Beach Pier. The Times measured it at roughly eight miles.

At first it wasn't clear whether a single animal had come ashore twice. NOAA Fisheries and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife have since confirmed that the two sightings involved two different turtles, KTLA reported. That confirmation is KTLA's alone; the Times names a different pair of agencies, NOAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for the response on the sand.

No hatch date has been announced for either nest.

For now the mesh sits on two patches of Orange County beach: Surfside Avenue in Seal Beach, and the sand just south of Tower 15 in Huntington Beach.