Heal the Bay Biologists Ponder Cause of Surfrider Urchin Die-Off

• ‘First Flush’ from Season’s First Major Rain Event and Lagoon Breach Are Suspected but Unproven

BY KAYLA BROWN

Rotting marine organisms tainted the air at Malibu’s Surfrider Beach, as thousands of dead sea urchins washed up to decay along the shore this past week.

“I had to tread carefully across the beach to avoid stepping on the prickly decaying urchins,” says Heal the Bay representative and Malibu resident Sarah Sikich. “I went back down to the beach this week to take some photos of the shocking mass mortality.”

Malibu experienced a similar die-off last fall after someone “artificially and illegally breached the lagoon in advance of projected good surf,” Sikich said.

However, the cause of the latest die-off has not yet been positively identified.

The Malibu Lagoon usually forms a closed system during the summer months, with a permeable dam of sand closing the outflow of Malibu Creek off from the ocean.

Breaching occurs naturally after the first heavy rain in the autumn, but the process has reportedly sometimes hastened by surfers hoping to improve the shape of Surfrider waves by creating a channel at the western end of the lagoon, or even by beachgoers digging channels in the sand for fun.

Artificially breaching the lagoon is illegal, and can result in heavy fines if the breacher is apprehended.

Sikich points to the recent breach of “Third Point toward the end of last week,” as well as “our first storm of the year…[and] late season south swell” as related to the die-off.

The first storm of the year is often noted as the “first flush” because of its innate power to push “all of the pollution that has accumulated in the watershed into open waters.” Sikich noted, “The urban slobber poured across the nearby reef, coinciding with the large-scale invertebrate die-off.”

This deadly combination may have created a disarray of decomposing sea life. Dead lobster, sea hare, and seabirds accompany the rotting urchins coiled in seaweed.

Heal the Bay says it will continue to search for the underlying cause to this “mass mortality.”