SAN DIEGO -- A San Diego tugboat captain and two of his deckhands have been charged in connection with the deaths of hundreds of seabirds at the Los Angeles/Long Beach harbor complex last summer, it was reported Friday.

The Long Beach city prosecutor's office filed seven misdemeanor charges Wednesday against Ralph Botticelli and Scott Caslin, both of San Diego, and Alan Schlange of Costa Mesa, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The defendants were employees of Point Loma Maritime Services Inc. of San Diego in June 2006. At that time, they allegedly went aboard and moved two barges where dozens of elegant and Caspian terns were nesting.

Investigators said the men were preparing one or both of the barges to be towed to Santa Barbara to serve as a platform for a Fourth of July fireworks display, the newspaper reported.

By repeatedly boarding the barges and moving the vessels around the harbor, the men frightened dozens of immature tern chicks, causing them to flee overboard and drown, the Union-Tribune reported.

About 400 to 500 tern chicks died over a three-day period.

Wildlife workers were able to save about two dozen of the terns, which were raised to maturity and released into the wild last year, according to the newspaper.

Officials for the state Department of Fish and Game said the deaths of the elegant terns were particularly significant because the imperiled species nests in only five locations worldwide, the Union-Tribune reported.

Long Beach City Prosecutor Tom Reeves likened the defendants' actions to "scaring a bunch of kittens into the water and watching them drown. ... We lost an entire generation of elegant terns from this nesting site," the Union-Tribune reported.