The Noyo Center Marine Field Station –showing off its detective skills. The Fort Bragg Advocate News reports the center workers and volunteers spent time in 2025 collecting samples and identifying mammals that washed ashore along a stretch of coast that includes Mendocino County. They found 65 marine animals–or parts of animals–that made landfall. 49 of them were sea lions that probably died of a kidney disease called leptospirosis, which has spread among the seal population up and down the coast. The center says its work may be sad at times, dealing with dead sea animals, but figuring out how the creatures died makes that job somewhat easier.