Dead and dying seabirds are breaking the hearts of beachgoers. An Independent tipster described a scene she saw near Goleta Beach on Saturday, walking from the UC Santa Barbara Lagoon to Campus Point: a mass bird grave. She had never seen anything like it.
First, she and her companion noticed at least 30 dead cormorants — those short, black seabirds — strewn across the rocks and sand. “We actually stopped counting,” the tipster said. Up towards the top of the bluff, there were hundreds more alive, clustered around a rocky dirt path and undisturbed by their presence.
“They didn't even try to fly away. They just feebly made noise,” she said. “A few were on their stomachs, wings spread [and] gasping for breath…. Heartbreaking.”