A yellow-bellied sea snake washed ashore in Orange County, and cellphone video showed the venomous animal on a beach at night in Crystal Cove. It was the first time the species had been seen in California since 2018.
The footage, broadcast by CBS Los Angeles, showed someone using what appeared to be the base of a palm frond to lift the snake and toss it back into the water. That mattered because the species is not considered dangerous to people if it is left alone, but it is still venomous and should not be handled.
Greg Pauly said there had been two other sightings of the species in Orange County in January and November of 2018, and that there have been six confirmed sightings in California since 1972. He was trying to contact the people who saw this snake to get more video and verify what happened on the beach.
Hayley Crowell said the sighting may have been linked to warm ocean water this summer, which can push the snakes north of their usual range. The animals hunt for fish in open water and can easily get caught in currents, and Crowell described them as “floating noodles who got lost.”
The snake’s arrival fits a pattern experts have been watching. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County added a yellow-bellied sea snake to its collection last week and said that was the first known report of the species in Southern California since 1983. The species is one of about 65 to 75 kinds of true sea snakes, animals that spend their entire lives in the water and give birth there.
What makes this sighting stand out is not only how rare it is, but how far north it came. A snake that normally lives offshore ended up on a Southern California beach, was handled by a beachgoer, and then disappeared back into the water before experts could fully document it. Pauly still wants the people who filmed it to come forward, because the next verified sighting could be the one that explains whether this was a one-off drift or part of a larger shift in the water.
