Look at the corner of Front Street and San Juan Street, where Avila Community Park meets the walk to the aquarium. An 8-foot bronze turtle sits there, flippers spread, its head turned a little as if it's watching the water. Upwell, a sea turtle nonprofit, installed it this fall and held the ribbon-cutting on October 15, which was Pacific Leatherback Conservation Day.
The sign next to it says leatherbacks reach Central Coast waters between June and November. This year the turtle went in near the end of that window, in a season when surveys turned up very few real leatherbacks and almost none of the jellyfish they cross the Pacific to eat. For now, the bronze one at the park is the easiest leatherback to see on this stretch of coast.
A Turtle Posed for the Water It Faces
The sculpture shows a male leatherback swimming. It isn't shown nesting or hauled out on sand. In Upwell's account of the project, artist Pamela Blotner says she and collaborator John Pearson chose that pose because the park sits next to federally designated critical foraging habitat for leatherbacks. Blotner worked from photographs and from her own memories of leatherback nesting beaches in Costa Rica. "It had to look as though it was actually in the ocean, but also that it was not too fanciful," she told Upwell.
Their small-scale model went to Artworks Foundry in Berkeley. The foundry made a 3-D model from it, cast the bronze in pieces, welded them together and gave the finished turtle a patina. Bronze turns bluish-green on its own over time, the way the Statue of Liberty did, and foundries can speed that up with a torch.
The money and labor came largely from Avila. Upwell lists major support from the Swift Family, the Avila Beach Tourism Alliance, the Avila Beach Community Foundation and anonymous donors. SLO County Parks and Recreation, the Central Coast Aquarium, Gaia Graphics Design, the Urena-Elenes Family and Artworks Foundry helped with installation. At the ribbon-cutting, District 3 Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg called the turtle "a meaningful addition" that will help teach "both residents and visitors about California's official state marine reptile."
The Federal Map Behind the Corner
The habitat Blotner mentioned is a real, mapped area. In January 2012, NOAA designated 41,914 square miles of West Coast ocean as critical habitat for leatherbacks. In California it runs from Point Arena down to Point Arguello and out to the 3,000-meter depth line, according to the final rule in the Federal Register. The section that includes Avila's coast is called Area 7. It covers offshore water from Point Arena to Point Sur and, closer in, the coastal water from Point Sur to Point Arguello.
The rule also explains why the line was drawn here. The designation is built around one prey feature, jellyfish, and NOAA describes leatherbacks feeding where upwelling makes sea nettles plentiful. The rule names Morro Bay and Avila Bay as places where fishery monitoring and trawl surveys have seasonally found large numbers of brown sea nettles. So the turtle stands beside one of the two bays the federal government singled out for this turtle's food.
Leatherbacks are a long way from home when they get here. The San Luis Obispo Tribune reported that they swim more than 7,000 miles from nesting beaches in the western Pacific. Adults can be 8 feet long and weigh up to 2,000 pounds, and Upwell puts the number of mature leatherbacks left in the wild at as few as 1,500.
What the Sign Says, and What 2026 Recorded
When the jellyfish don't show up, the turtles have little reason to come. That's how 2026 went.
| The usual pattern | What 2026 recorded | |
|---|---|---|
| Arrival window | June through November, per the sculpture's sign | One leatherback seen in Monterey Bay on July 19 |
| Food | Seasonal sea nettle blooms in Morro and Avila bays | No jellyfish or other favorable habitat seen on September aerial surveys from Point Lobos to Point Arena |
| Turtles in local water | Leatherbacks, which handle cold water | Olive Ridleys, a tropical species: two in Monterey Bay in August and a likely one about 10 miles west of Ragged Point on October 12 |
These figures come from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's 2026-2027 risk assessment, last updated October 23, which uses Upwell's survey flights. The state blames anomalously warm ocean temperatures, "attributable to the ongoing marine heatwaves and a significant El Niño event," for making the coast friendlier to tropical turtles. The Ragged Point sighting was at the Monterey and San Luis Obispo county line, so it is the closest a sea turtle came to this coast this fall, as far as the state's records show.
The warm water isn't letting up yet. The Climate Prediction Center's discussion issued October 8, 2026 had an El Niño Advisory in effect. It described the event as strengthening and gave better than an 83% chance that it would be strong to very strong through January to March 2027. On September 17, CDFW also told anglers statewide to expect large numbers of yellowfin, bluefin and albacore tuna, plus less common wahoo, striped marlin and dorado, all moving north with the warmer water.
The Same Warm Water, Seen From Shore in Morro Bay
New Times SLO reported that Pacific Wildlife Care's Morro Bay clinic had taken in more than 765 starving common murres since September 1, including 68 on October 10 alone. Most were young and badly underweight. The clinic said several factors may be involved. One possibility it raised is that the unusually warm summer ocean pushed cold-water prey deeper, where it's harder for the birds to reach.
Leatherbacks that feed on sea nettles and young murres that feed on small fish share the same problem. Both depend on cold, upwelled water to put food within reach, and both had a hard fall. Closer to home, the fishing was ordinary: an Avila Beach boat's count for October 28 was rockfish, gopher rockfish and copper rockfish.
If a Real One Surfaces Off the Pier
Upwell is a 501(c)(3) founded in 2017 to protect and recover endangered turtles through research and conservation work at sea. Much of what scientists know about leatherbacks off California comes from aerial surveys, in-water captures and satellite tags, and NOAA runs that research every year. In a year with almost no sightings, one report from a kayaker or angler carries a lot of weight. The state's assessment also notes that several nesting females tagged in the Solomon Islands are heading toward the eastern North Pacific. Researchers are watching to see whether they enter the California Current.
There are two ways to report a sea turtle:
- NOAA Fisheries: email [email protected] with the location, the species if you know it, the date and time, what the turtle was doing, and photos if you have them. The address is listed on NOAA's leatherback research page.
- Upwell's Sea Turtle Spotter: report through iNaturalist, a Google form, or [email protected]. Include photos or video, date, time, coordinates or an approximate location, and the turtle's condition, behavior and surroundings.
A leatherback has no hard shell. Its back is dark, leathery and ridged lengthwise, and the bronze at the park shows exactly that shape.
Folding the Bronze Into a Winter Walk
The sculpture's address is 50 San Juan Street, next to the Central Coast Aquarium. The aquarium hosted an Upwell talk on leatherback conservation on October 17. Its Big Fish Little Fish program runs every other Tuesday from September through May, and the Avila events calendar lists a December 1 session from 10 to 11 a.m.
Walk a few blocks up Front Street and you'll reach 550 Front St., where the former Avila Lighthouse Suites reopened as Avila Beach House after a $9 million, four-month renovation. The Tribune reported that the grand opening was September 17. Farther out, the Point San Luis Lighthouse has Wednesday and Saturday tours scheduled through November and December, with a round-trip van from the Avila Beach tour parking lot. Inland, Avila Valley Barn gets its Christmas trees the week before Thanksgiving and sells them through January 15.
The leatherback's season on the sign ends this month. The bronze turtle will stay at the corner of Front and San Juan through the winter and into next June, when the real ones may come back if the nettles return.
At Ronca Real Estate, we love passing along the small changes that make Avila feel like Avila, from a new landmark by the aquarium to what's happening in the bay. If you've seen a turtle off the pier this year, or you'd like to talk with Tracy and Stephanie about life along this coast, we'd be glad to hear from you.
