As fishermen and scientists chase tropical tuna and marlin that have drifted into San Diego’s unusually warm waters during the past two years, they’ve encountered something else they’ve never seen: flotillas of loggerhead sea turtles bobbing off the California coast.

“This is the first account we’ve seen of so many loggerhead turtles in the history of scientific record,” said Jeff Seminoff, head of the marine turtle ecology and assessment program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla.

An annual study finds high bacteria levels and low oxygen levels in creeks and streams of inland San Diego County, and concludes water quality is suffering amid the ongoing drought. The Los Angeles Times says the 2015 San Diego Coastkeeper report released this week ranked the inland water quality as fair to poor – with no watershed earning good or excellent status.

The county’s northern watersheds received fair ratings. Most central and southern watersheds received marks of marginal, while the Tijuana area was rated poor. Coastkeeper used data from 360 samples taken at various sites throughout the year.

The weather phenomenon known as El Nino is fading, and drought conditions remain entrenched in San Diego and the rest of California, according to a pair of reports released Thursday.

The Climate Prediction Center, part of the National Weather Service, announced a 75 percent chance that a La Nina pattern could form in El Nino’s place. El Nino is characterized by warmer than usual ocean water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific and often brings more rain than normal to the state.

Leaks from a petroleum storage plant have contaminated the land and befouled drinking water under San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium for decades, the city claims in lawsuit against Kinder Morgan. The Tuesday lawsuit in Superior Court accuses Houston-based Kinder Morgan Energy Partners and affiliates of dumping “hundreds of thousands of gallons of dangerous poisons and harmful chemicals into drinking water which otherwise would be available to serve the growing needs of San Diegans.” Years ago, the city used the aquifer beneath the stadium site for drinking water, and it wants to do so again.