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Adam Fox grabbed the nets and the cage from the back of his pickup truck. Something in the sand was disturbing the iconic Southern California scenery at the Santa Monica Pier on Friday morning.

A sea lion washed up on the beach just north of the Ferris wheel. It was alive but gravely ill and in a disoriented, near-comatose state. On the other side of the pier, another sea lion? lay in the sand, a little more alert but still sick.

Mr. Fox, who works for a sea-mammal rescue group, rushed to help save the animals and transport them to get treated. Both sea lions were given ID numbers, which told a story.

They were tagged as 25-193 and 25-195 — the group’s 193rd and 195th patients of the year.

All along the Southern California coastline from San Diego to Santa Barbara, hundreds of animals — sea lions, dolphins, seabirds — are washing up on the sand either dead or seriously ill. Coastal researchers and officials say it’s become a marine-life crisis that has overwhelmed rescue organizations, distressed beachgoers and hurt California’s ocean habitat.

The cause is a neurotoxin produced by an algae bloom. The toxin, known as domoic acid, is harmless to fish but can be deadly to sea mammals. Fish carry the toxin, but if mammals and birds eat the fish, the toxin can poison them, causing seizures, making them behave erratically or putting them in a coma. The only treatment is to flush out the toxin and medicate the symptoms.

Algal blooms are not rare in California, but the amount of toxic acid the blooms have been releasing and the scale of harm they have been causing to sea life have puzzled scientists.

“We’ve been seeing more toxin both in the organism itself and then also in the animals that are acquiring it,” said Clarissa Anderson, the director of the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System, which monitors ocean conditions. “They seem to have more toxin in their tissues. So it may be that the naturally occurring plankton is starting to produce more toxin over time, and that might be why we see more impacts.”