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.

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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

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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.

NEW YORK — In Brian Sanchez's slice of Astoria, the FIFA World Cup doesn't begin with the first match. It starts weeks earlier, with the arrival of a sticker album — and a mission.

It's a deceptively simple one: Fill the book with all the stickers representing World Cup teams, players, venues and other tournament details. But these stickers are sold in blind packs, similar to baseball or Pokémon cards, which adds to the fun and the headaches.

Sanchez, 20, has tried to complete the task before but never succeeded. This year, he planned to skip it altogether, but it was hard to ignore the chatter and excitement among his friends and family — both at home and abroad — who were all participating.

"Honestly it comes down to a little bit of FOMO," he said.

The hunt for stickers, produced by the Italian company Panini, is a decades-old World Cup tradition that's especially popular in Latin America and Europe. In the U.S., interest has been building steadily over the years, but this summer, the buzz is bigger than ever.

Jason Howarth, senior vice president of marketing and athlete relations at Panini America, said retailers reported being sold out of sticker packets within a week of the release in late April — unseen in previous World Cup cycles.

"There's a different energy coming out of it," he said. "Right now, it's outpacing where we were in 2022 by three to five times."

The surging demand comes as collectors face their toughest challenge yet. This year, they need to track down 980 distinct stickers to put the album to bed — 310 more than at the 2022 World Cup and a record number for the company. It's a reflection of the upcoming tournament's historic scale, which is expanding from 32 teams to 48 across three countries.

This edition will also be the second to last men's World Cup sticker album produced by Panini — ending a partnership that stretches back over five decades. Last month, FIFA announced that starting in 2031, U.S.-based Fanatics will be the official supplier of FIFA soccer cards, trading cards and stickers.

On a recent afternoon in Central Park, Sanchez met up with other collectors. Hunched over stacks of stickers, some two dozen people inspected the offerings with laser focus.

With only four stickers missing, Sanchez was already looking forward to earning bragging rights as the first person in his family across the finish line this year.

" I'm feeling pretty accomplished," he said. "I've been trying to get a win, and this is gonna be a huge win for me."

An expensive, labor-intensive but rewarding hobby

A single pack of seven stickers — available online, at corner stores or drugstore chains like Walgreens and CVS — now cost $2, compared to four years ago when five stickers retailed for around $1. That means simply buying enough packs to accumulate 980 stickers would total $280.

Given the costs, finishing the book is rarely a solitary pursuit, and aficionados often meet up to spread the wealth, according to Crista Latvis, 26, who organized the recent sticker swap in Central Park.

"You can't just buy your way into it," she said. "Otherwise,  it's super expensive and you've got to be very lucky."

For many, these gatherings are part of the pastime's draw.

"It's great to meet other people who are also doing it and also excited for the World Cup, especially since it's here," Latvis said.

Sebastian Clavijo, who attended Latvis' swap, said he spent tens of thousands of dollars on his quest this year. Clavijo, 32, has been collecting Panini stickers since he was 4. This year, his goal is to complete the book only with pieces featuring red and purple borders — an even rarer get.

" I just like soccer and I love collecting," he said. "That's my hobby, you know?"

In 2022, Panini introduced stickers with different colored borders that vary in rarity. That element has been an especially big hit with the trading card community and contributed to the hobby's appeal in the U.S., according to Howarth from Panini America.

Panini popularity has grown along with soccer

Demand has always existed in New York, Texas, Florida, among other big states, but it's also emerging nationwide, in places like Phoenix and the Northwest, according to Howarth.

" As soccer has grown, so has Panini," he said.

Howarth believes part of this year's popularity stems from the expanded World Cup format. Teams that have never qualified for the tournament — and therefore never been sticker-fied by Panini — are finally getting their moment.

For some, completing the sticker album is driven by nostalgia for their childhood, family or home country.

Linda Lino never heard of the hobby until she was 18, and her grandmother gave her a Panini sticker book. That was in 2014. Lino has completed every World Cup edition since, in part in memory of her late grandmother.

"It started with my grandma and then it became like a whole family thing," Lino said. "I love the community that it brings together."

That's especially true with her father, who never had the chance to collect stickers when he was a kid in Peru, Lino said. Now, the two are making up for lost time.

"My dad is so excited," she said. "He's like 'I want to help you. I want to put the stickers together.'"

Clemente Lisi, a sports journalist who has written about the Panini sticker phenomenon, said the sticker album serves as a time capsule for the World Cup. With the tournament's return to the U.S. after 32 years, he expects it will produce more first-time collectors looking for a way to remember this summer.

"This may be the only tangible thing from a World Cup unless you go to a game," he said.

Lisi, who also runs Planet Soccer on Substack, anticipates that the U.S. company Fanatics will further cater to the market at home.

" It'll even become more American and more baked into our culture," he said.

Sanchez, the college student from Astoria, dabbles in collecting other items, like vinyls and trading cards. But what he appreciates most about the Panini sticker scene is its supportive and rarely competitive nature.

" The community around the World Cup stickers is something like I've never seen before," he said. "The community is just so nice."

After countless hours of trading and visiting multiple convenience stores, Sanchez found his 980th and final sticker at the swap in Central Park. It was of the Iraqi team. He let out a gasp, followed by a smile that spanned ear to ear. "Let's goooo!"

With a mountain of duplicates left, Sanchez wasn't ready to move on just yet. His next step was to help his mother finish her album.

" I'm going to take a break," he said. "I'm going to celebrate today and then get back to it."

Topline:

The backstory: Once a year, dozens of sound artists converge on the hill with views of the harbor below to perform their audio art, which can range from serene to “beautifully weird.”

What to expect: This year includes a performer bending a bar of tin with his bare hands to get it to emit what’s called a "tin cry" and synthesizer-based soundscapes that take inspiration from both the ocean and the industrial space below.

When to go: Soundpedro is free and lasts from 7-10 p.m. Saturday.

More info at the Soundpedro website.

You may know about Union Station as an L.A. landmark or as a transportation hub — but how much do you know about its rich architectural history?

To foster that interest and knowledge, Metro created a series of public tours of the station this spring.

“There's so much that you might just walk by without really having the opportunity to delve deeply into,” said Zipporah Lax Yamamoto, deputy executive officer of Metro’s art program. “[The tours are] a really wonderful opportunity to be able to spend time with the station, learn more about the historic landmark, which belongs to all of us.”

Union Station in Los Angeles

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Myung J. Chun

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Getty Images

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Architectural style

It’s called Union Station because when it opened in 1939, it connected the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway.

While it was designed by father-and-son team Donald and John Parkinson, the architects who gave us L.A. City Hall, its style is very different. Union Station’s interior and exterior mixes art deco, Spanish colonial and other styles into a hybrid dubbed Mission Moderne.

As you begin the tour, entering from Alameda Street, tour guides ask you to look up at the decorative elements in the high ceilings. The beams and geometric patterns may look like wood — but they’re actually just painted to look that way.

A community destroyed by development

Along the way, the tour gives background on pieces created more than 30 years ago. These include "City of Dreams/River of History" by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt in 1995. Sun’s piece uses remnants of the Chinese American homes torn down to build the station, a reference to the high price that community paid for this building’s construction.

Detail from "City of Dreams/River of History," created by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt at Union Station.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

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“It was an enormous price. Chinatown ceased to exist in this area. … The families that lived here during that time are still around and maintain archives of that time period and the original Chinatown here, and we've worked with those families to have those objects on display,” Lax Yamamoto said.

Meanwhile, Wyatt’s large-scale mural includes the face of a Chinese man, along with nine other people of different races, ethnicities and ages; a nod to the diversity of the city since its founding in the late 1700s.

There are also stops to see new art installed for the World Cup.

A mural by Richard Wyatt at Union Station

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

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There are three tours left in the series but the RSVPs have reached their maximum; however, Lax Yamamoto said Metro will decide whether to continue them based on what people have thought about the tours.

Meanwhile, Union Station is set to swell with people in the next couple of months as L.A. hosts World Cup games. The station is the site of an official FIFA-sponsored Fan Zone from June 25-28.

When I first came to the states many years ago, if I’d mentioned Arsenal, people would have thought I was referring to the U.S. military or something. But all that has changed. You can now watch U.K. premier league games in sports bars, most kids play soccer, and Ted Lasso is must-watch TV.

To which I say — welcome. We English are proud of the fact that soccer began with us more than 150 years ago. And every World Cup, we think, surely this will be the year that the trophy returns home — the year that we’ll win!

Queen Elizabeth II awarding the Jules Rimet World Cup Trophy to Bobby Moore after England won the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley.

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Marc Atkins/Getty Images

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Getty Images Europe

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I mean it did happen … once… back in 1966. It’s such a long time ago the game was televised in black and white and shillings were still being used. My mother was nine months pregnant with my brother, and got so excited jumping up and down she went into labor and had him the next day. World Cup Willie they called him. Actually his name is David, but never mind.

Since then, every four years everyone in the U.K. watches the games with bated breath. And then something stupid will happen, and we’ll lose, like that time in 1998 when David Beckham (who played for England before he came to L.A. Galaxy) lost his temper and was sent off, and we’ll sit there, gloomy and despondent. I know because I was there in my friend’s living room in London, gloomy and despondent, thinking just once, just once, maybe could we please have a win?

David Beckham's infamous 1998 red card in the England vs. Argentina game.

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Richard Sellers/Allstar/Getty Images

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Getty Images Europe

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The last World Cup, I went to Ye Olde Kings Head in Santa Monica to watch England play. At 7 a.m. it was full of people already on their third pint of beer. And when the team got through to the next round, the gentle men of England ran outside the pub, whipped off their shirts and started weaving through traffic, singing football chants and acting like hooligans. I really couldn’t decide if I was embarrassed or if it felt like home.

Anyway, this time, since I’m now an American citizen, it’s in my contract that I need to support Team USA. I’m a dual citizen, though, so I’ll also be cheering for England. If by any chance Team USA and England play each other, my two selves will be watching, with a cup of tea in one hand, and a cold brewski in the other, and the polarities will explode, or something. But what will probably happen is that both teams will be eclipsed by Brazil or France playing the beautiful game… beautifully. Cheers.