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The mystery of sea lions being stranded in the US West coast beaches in recent years has almost been solved. According to a new study, the sea lions eat crabs and small fish lined with a toxin found in algae called domoic acid that causes brain damage and seizures, impacting the ability of sea lions to navigate, eat and their general survival in the ocean, reports The Guardian.

Domoic Acid has been a leading cause of death amongst sea lions, but the new study, it also points out the way it affects its behavior as well. This trend can cause decline in the population even when the animals are not being killed. The team of researchers studied the rescued sea lions at the marine mammal center in Sausalito and found that the sea lions consume large quantities of small fish that is causing high amount of brain damage, specifically to the hippocampus, a part of the brain that impedes memory, as per Nature World News.

This year, a large number of sea lions were found deserted along the California coast. So far, the studies have only characterized the clinical impact of the toxin. But now, the researchers have also found the behavioral affect of domoic acid, as per news release.

"One thing that had been known and fairly well demonstrated is that DA (Domoic Acid) leads to fairly reliable neurologic conditions. While other neurotoxins might cause general brain damage, DA seemed to cause reliable, specific lesions on the hippocampus. In humans, this results in an illness called amnesiac shellfish poisoning when shellfish who've eaten the algae are ingested," Peter Cook, who led the study as a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz and is now at Emory University, told the Washington Post. "It hadn't really been studied in marine mammals. People didn't see it as a large-scale ecological concern."