The Brief

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

It started like a typical Sunday afternoon in Long Beach.

I took my regular African dance class with Ndella Davis-Diassy, then had some out-of-this-world barbecue at Chef Memo’s before ending my afternoon with a long walk along the coast with a friend.

As we walked and talked, we saw the usual suspects — abandoned toothbrushes, deodorant sticks and empty laundry detergent containers blowing like tumbleweeds. The cleaning products dirtying the stretch of sand didn’t make me want to put on my shoes, but the birds did.

“Is that a seagull?” I asked. It was dead. A few more steps and we saw a cormorant, one of those black, glossy birds that are always sunbathing with their wings out. Dead. A few more steps. Another seagull. Dead. More steps. Then another cormorant. Along a 1.5-mile stretch, I saw eight dead birds.

At first, I was sad. Then I was overwhelmed. But eventually, I got curious and decided to look into it.

Searching for answers

A dead bird lies on the beach near the Long Beach shore.

(

Megan Tan

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For The LA Local

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Like any good millennial armchair detective, I started my investigation on Reddit. 

It was shocking to see that something was killing birds all along California beaches, from Orange County to San Diego and up the coast toward Ventura County and beyond. A user in Santa Barbara summed up the situation succinctly, if without proper grammar: “Was at Ellwood Beach yesterday, counted 14 dead birds, spaced about one every 30-40 feet.”

There was nothing specifically about Long Beach that I could find, though I did learn there’s a bar in Japan called “Little Long Beach” in the r/longbeach Reddit community.

Turning to an older technology, I dialed 310-514-2573, the number for International Bird Rescue, a nonprofit organization focused on saving seabirds. 

I got an answering machine with prerecorded instructions: If you see a bird that needs help, find a box, place the bird in the box, put a cloth over the bird, put the bird in a specific area and do not offer it food or water.

Next, I called the Long Beach Lifeguards Headquarters and spoke to someone on background — they weren’t authorized to speak to me — who told me finding dead birds was nothing new, but the number of dead birds they’re seeing was anything but normal. Then they told me I should talk to the people I called first, International Bird Rescue, because that’s who they called when they found 30 birds dead on the beach one day.

“30 birds!” I shouted back at them. “I know,” they said quietly. “It’s a lot of dead birds.”

But they didn’t have a clue what was causing it.

The man with the metal detector

A few days later, I went back to the scene of the crime — for lack of a better term — and saw a man with a metal detector scanning the sand along Long Beach City Beach.

I noticed a few things: He was built like a wrestler — tall and dense — and was wearing camouflage shorts, a matching hat and a white shirt and, this will be important later, he was not carrying a shovel.

He also told me the dead birds I saw were a drop in the ocean compared to what he’s been seeing lately. “Every time I go to a beach, I see about 10 dead birds. Maybe that’s natural, but I think it’s a lot.”

When he spots the birds, he doesn’t do what I do, which is gasp and move on. He puts on a pair of gloves and buries them with his hands. “You’ll never know it’s there. Unless your kids start digging in the sand,” he said.

The man with the metal detector declined to give me his name because he didn’t trust the media. But he did tell me the theory he had about how the birds died.

Across the ocean, about 2,000 feet in front of us, was an island with a beige concrete tower wrapped in blue lines. He pointed to it.

“That one, right in front of us. That’s an oil rig,” he told me. “All these islands out here that look all pretty are oil rigs.”

His theory is that oil is being pumped into the ocean and when seabirds dive for food, they get oil all over themselves. That’s why they wind up on the shore.

The THUMS theory

The man with the metal detector was pointing at the THUMS Islands, an acronym for Texaco, Humble, Union, Mobil and Shell.

In the 1960s, those five companies leased multiple oil fields together off the coast of Long Beach and produced 150,000 barrels a day at their peak. But recently, production shrunk from 15,000 to 8,000 barrels a day. The city of Long Beach is currently debating whether the islands should remain active oil islands or be converted into parks, research centers or boutique resorts.

“These birds were not oiled,” JD Bergeron, the CEO of International Bird Rescue, told me a few days later in a phone interview. Bergeron is based in the Bay Area, but his organization also has a wildlife center in San Pedro.

Around March 1, Bergeron and his team at International Bird Rescue started receiving four times the usual number of calls from residents across Southern California. They’ve all been about dead birds. He told me their helpline went from 10 calls a day about dead birds to 40.

“When the numbers start to come in more rapidly, we get nervous,” Bergeron said, adding that his organization is exploring several causes for the uptick in dead birds. But he reiterated that none of the dead birds had been covered in oil.

The man with the metal detector’s theory didn’t pan out. So I went back to the beach.

The trash theory

It started like a typical Sunday afternoon in Long Beach.

“I don’t know exactly why the birds are dying,” Long Beach resident Adam Novak told me. Novak has been walking the beach almost every day for 15 years. “I’m sure it’s probably eating the trash. It’s pretty dirty out here.”

I let Novak get on with his day and walked 1.5 miles from Junipero Beach to Rosie’s Dog Beach. I passed the Belmont Pier, the Belmont Plaza Pool and multiple moms with kids buying fruit in plastic containers and individually wrapped ice cream from various futeros and paleteros.

Along the shoreline, I stepped over every size of trash imaginable, from small salsa containers to an abandoned pair of mismatched white Pumas to a large black suitcase you would definitely have to check on an airplane. At one point, I spotted a dark figure 100 feet away floating in the water and debated whether it was a cute seal bobbing around or a mattress.

It was a mattress.

But Novak’s trash theory is not on International Bird Rescue’s list of causes to explore.

When one of the first carcasses was found this year, Bergeron said they had to rule out the worst-case scenario for the cause of death: bird flu. Bergeron compared bird flu to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s highly contagious and incurable, and it was the reason egg prices increased back in 2024.

Thankfully, when the bird flu test came back, it was negative. Bergeron and his partners had to go back to the drawing board, but at least they could exhale.

The freak incident theory 

The next theory International Bird Rescue had to rule out was harmful algal blooms called red tide that are caused by fertilizer run off into the ocean. The fish eat the algae, and then the birds eat the fish, potentially causing the birds to die.

Red tide left a mark on a variety of marine animals along the coast in 2025 and was also visibly present in Long Beach in 2022. But Bergeron’s team wan’t able to link it directly to the surge in dead birds.

And there are other isolated accidents that Bergeron and his partners tried to rule out.

Back in 2021, a colony of about 10,000 beach birds nesting in Bolsa Chica was devastated when a drone crashed into them. According to Bergeron, International Bird Rescue was able to save 3,300 baby chicks. Many others didn’t make it.

But so far, they hadn’t found an isolated freak incident like that, which led Bergeron to his strongest theory: The birds are starving because of climate change.

What we know — and what we don’t

A bird soars near the Long Beach shore.

(

Megan Tan

/

For The LA Local

)

According to NOAA IEA Program, oceanic heat waves have been present in the Pacific Ocean for years. Bergeron referred to it as a “warm ocean blob.”

NOAA’s tracker calls the current heatwave NEP25A — a mass of water with elevated temperatures moving around the Pacific Ocean. Fish dislike warm water, so when the warmer water moves into specific regions, fish either dive deeper into lower temperatures or move farther away into colder waters.

Even though Bergeron was hesitant to wholeheartedly point to a warm ocean blob as the single contributing factor, he admitted it outweighs all the others. “From my perspective, it’s hard to see any version of this in which the temperature of the water is not a factor.”

The truth is that there are currently no hard facts explaining what is causing dead birds to wash up along the coast of Long Beach and Southern California. But there is one fact that cannot be ignored: As we head into the summer months, when families and tourists flock to the beaches, the dead birds will be there. Some seen and some buried in the sand.

Maybe, then, the question isn’t what is causing their deaths, but who is responsible for cleaning them off the beach?

“I wish I had a good answer there,” Bergeron said. “I don’t think that there is necessarily anyone whose responsibility it is to pick up dead birds.”

Residents who see a dead bird can call City of Long Beach Animal Care Services at 562-570-7387. But someone there told me they consider “dead animal pick-ups an non-emergency.” It may take the city 24 to 72 hours to respond. By then, the tide may have shifted, and who knows where the dead bird will be. 

Or they can do what an unassuming retired man with a metal detector does: put on some gloves and dig.

Southern California was built on radio.

"I can still hear the jingle KFWB News 98,” wrote  Taline in Los Feliz, during a recent conversation on LAist's daily news show, AirTalk, which airs on 89.3 FM. “I grew up hearing that in my dad's minivan on the way to and from school. It has a special place in my heart.”

Back in April, broadcast company Audacy announced KNX News — one of the last-remaining all-news FM stations — was leaving the FM dial where it had simulcast on 97.1 FM since 2021. The station, which is also one of the oldest in L.A., is not budging from 1070 AM where it has been on the air for more than 100 years. The move away from FM officially happened in May to make way for a new sports talk station, which Audacy officials called an area of growth for advertisers in today’s media landscape.

The move is one in a long line of changes for radio and a reminder that before podcasts, playlists and algorithms, many Southern Californians built their days around radio broadcasts.

Radio, a daily ritual

The construction of KNX

(

Herman J. Schultheis

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Michael Jackson, a well-known KNX, personality

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Larry Mantle, now in his 41st year hosting AirTalk, remembers being a kid and dreaming of what it might be like to be behind the mic at one of these radio stations.

“ I grew up with KNX," he said. “My dream job as a kid was to be an anchor on KNX or KFWB, the two local all-news radio stations, 'cause there was nothing like hosting AirTalk that even existed at that point.”

Mantle opened up the phone lines on a recent show to hear from his fellow SoCal radio lovers about the shows they miss and the memories they have. Here's what they had to say:

A love for radio, then and now  

A pilot of KMPC's traffic alert helicopter pictured with his daughter and grandson.

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Los Angeles Public Library

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A 1963 picture of Valley State College (now Los Angeles Valley College) preparing to launch KVCM

(

Larry Leach

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Los Angeles Public Library

)

“When you'd walk down Hollywood Boulevard where the station was, you could hear it playing as you went down the street,” said  Olivia in Glendale about KLAC 570 with Al Jarvis.

 Larry in Yorba Linda shouted out KBCA Jazz for its 24-hour jazz, saying “When I first moved out here in '68 from Phoenix, which had like an hour a week, it was a real wonder.”

 Mark in Glassell Park emailed that he loves KCRW’s Henry Rollins, writing, “I used to bristle at his unique DJ persona, but over time, I came to love him and his crazy eclectic playlists. I find his knowledge in history and punk rock fascinating. He's a gem and a legend."

"I'd like to give a shout-out to all the DJs working at KXLU, the college station at Loyola Marymount University, said  Jeremy in Culver City in an email. “That station's been on the air for nearly 60 years. I believe it's one of the best examples of what's possible with radio."

"KFWB and KRLA back in the day when they were rock music stations —  Dr. Demento, one of my favorite on-air personalities, also had eclectic music taste," said  Carrie in Desert Edge.

“ Dr. Demento was must listening when I was a kid in junior high school at Le Conte Junior High in Hollywood,” Mantle added. “Every Sunday night on KMET, we would make sure we were listening to Dr. Demento and his funny records.”

The question remains…

An 11-year-old winning a car in a KMPC contest in 1963.

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Listener support is vital to any radio station, and it’s clear KNX has many lifelong fans. AirTalk listeners highlighted their support for household KNX names over the decades like Bill Keene, Melinda Lee, Mike Roy and Jackie Olden.

As KNX makes changes, many are watching closely and thinking about the future of radio.

Listeners like Tommy in La Quinta are left wondering if the radio dial will be the same…

“I’m a hardcore listener, but I don't know about casual listeners [and] if they'll tune to AM,” he said.

After months of hand-wringing, Los Angeles and LA28 have come to a tentative agreement on how Olympics organizers will reimburse the city for its expenses for the 2028 Summer Games.

According to the deal, the private Olympic organizing committee will pay upfront for the estimated cost of services that are not eligible for federal reimbursement, like trash pick-up and traffic control. Under another proposal, the city would also be able to tap an LA28 contingency fund if it isn't fully repaid by the federal government for policing costs at Olympic venues.

The agreement is nearly nine months overdue and still needs approval by Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council.

The 2028 Olympics are intended to be privately financed, and an existing city agreement with LA28 states that the Olympics organizers, not L.A., will pay for extra costs for public services in support of the Games. But L.A. is the financial back-stop for the Olympics, meaning if LA28 goes in the red, taxpayers will pick up the bill.

Beyond that, the city services agreement presents another area where L.A. could incur additional unexpected expenses for hosting the Games. L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez warned LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover earlier this year that a bad deal could "bankrupt" the city.

Jacie Prieto Lopez, an LA28 spokesperson, and Paul Krekorian, who leads the city's office of major events, said in statements that the freshly inked agreement would help deliver a fiscally responsible Games.

"Mayor Bass’ priority is that the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games be fiscally responsible, protect taxpayers, and benefit Angelenos for decades to come. This agreement helps deliver that commitment," Krekorian said.

But the contract between the two parties doesn't fully resolve one of the biggest areas of financial risk for the city: the enormous cost of security for an event as extensive and high-profile as the summer Olympics and Paralympics.

Organizers are counting on the federal government to pay for public safety at Olympic venues that are considered part of a "national special security event." That includes costs for LAPD staffing. LA28 has not included security costs in its $7.1 billion budget — a fact that City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto criticized earlier this year.

The federal government has so far allocated $1 billion for security costs for the Olympics. Exactly where those federal funds will go has not yet been determined, and there's no guarantee they will cover all of L.A.'s policing costs.

To address this, city officials have also proposed an amendment to a 2021 agreement between the city and LA28. That amendment would establish that if L.A. is not reimbursed by the federal government for all its eligible expenses, it could dip into LA28's contingency fund of $270 million before the private organizing committee could use those funds for any legacy projects.

But that bucket of money will first be used for any costs that Olympics organizers still owe if they run out of revenue — meaning if the Olympics don't turn a profit, the city's access to that money will depend on how much is left for the taking.

Civil rights attorney Connie Rice, who has been tracking the city's negotiations with LA28, told LAist the agreement was a "PR document" not a deal. She pointed out that if the federal government does not pay up for security spending as expected, L.A. could be in trouble.

" It leaves the taxpayers with a GoFundMe strategy," she said.

The city services agreement lays the groundwork for more negotiations between LA28 and the city. Each venue will require its own agreement, to be negotiated by July 1, 2027. Venues in the city of L.A. include Dodger Stadium, the L.A. Convention Center, L.A. Memorial Coliseum and the Venice Beach Boardwalk.

The City Council's ad-hoc committee on the 2028 Games will meet Tuesday afternoon to vote on the agreement.