The Daily Bucket - Marine Oddities

Two recent articles regarding marine life caught my eye. The first concerns an

Unexpected Sea Turtle:

According to this article at Turtle Island Restoration Network, some people watching elephant seals at Point Reyes National Seashore in northern California spotted an olive ridley sea turtle about twenty feet offshore on December 30, 2015. This is a small endangered sea turtle that should be nesting  down in Oxahaca or thereabouts, thousands or miles south of here. Per the article, it is suspected that warm currents caused by the current el nino brought it here:

“This olive ridley sea turtle is way out of its normal range, and while what it was doing here will remain a mystery, it is probably due to the warm water El Nino conditions occurring in the Pacific. This species nests in Mexico and Central America and is normally found in tropical and temperate warm waters, with its distribution normally bounded by the 20º isotherms,” said Todd Steiner, biologist and executive director of Turtle Island.

The other concerns some oddly absent whales.

The title of This Article in the Christian Science Monitor, “Mysterious absence: Where are Hawaii's humpback whales?”, sums it up nicely. The whales, which usually show up in early December are still mostly absent. While not really a cause for concern, it is quite unusual. Once again, el nino is a major suspect in that it could be that they're spending more time feeding in northern waters because of el nino disruptions. An alternative hypothesis is that their numbers have increased to the extent that competitiion for food necessitates an extra long pre-migration feeding session.