WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Sea otters were once hunted nearly to extinction because their dense fur was valued as an insulator for clothing. Recent research shows the benefits and challenges of restoring otters in their historic seashore habitat. Advocates say the creatures are a critical part of coastal environments and helping their numbers grow makes seacoasts more healthy and resilient and helps our climate.
The most seasoned ecosystem engineer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium sports a distinctly white fur head and white patches on her back. At 24 years old, Rosa is the oldest sea otter at the Aquarium. Since being rescued as an orphaned four-week-old pup in Santa Cruz in 1999, she has played a crucial role in supporting the sea otter population in California; over the years, she has acted as a surrogate mom for more than a dozen pups that were found malnourished and abandoned like she once was, showing them how to crack open abalone and how to groom themselves.
Historically, between 150,000 and 300,000 sea otters once occupied the Pacific coast from Japan to Mexico. Otters don’t just hold the record for being the smallest marine mammal in North America, they also have the densest fur of any animal on earth, with up to a million hairs per square inch. (A human usually has less than 100,000 hairs on their entire head.) But what helps them survive in cold water was the cause of their near-extinction at the beginning of the last century.
At a behind-the-scenes tour at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a volunteer passes around a thick brown-grey otter pelt. It is impossibly soft to the touch, making it immediately obvious why it was once such a coveted insulating material for coats and hats. “Ninety-nine percent of sea otters were killed for their coat,” the tour guide explains.
Since otters became a protected species under the Endangered Species Act in 1977, northern sea otters have rebounded to about 100,000 otters in North America, mainly in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. But the smaller southern sea otters still occupy only 13 percent of their historic range, with a population of an estimated 3,000 currently living on California’s central coast, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Their numbers once dropped as low as about 50 otters, and the experts at the Monterey Bay Aquarium have played a key role in rescuing pups.
Both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Elakha Alliance, an Oregon nonprofit named after the Chinook term for otter, recently finished feasibility studies showing that it is not only possible to restore otters in their historic habitat but that it would yield enormous benefits as well as unique challenges. “Sea otters are a really critical part of our coastal environment,” Jane Bacchieri, the executive director of the Elakha Alliance, says. “Bringing back sea otters means making the coast more resilient.”
Without a healthy otter population to keep them in check, the number of sea urchins — the otters’ favorite food — ballooned, in some coastal parts of California, by 10,000 percent. The purple urchins, sometimes labeled “sea zombies,” have mowed down entire kelp forests in Northern California, with up to 95 percent disappearing since 2012. If the ravenous otters were returned to their historic habitat, they almost certainly would reduce sea urchin numbers and thus allow kelp forests and seagrasses to flourish again.
This is important because kelp naturally sequesters carbon and thus helps fight climate change and improve water quality.
One aspect that makes sea otter reintroduction more challenging than other species is that they are extremely attached to their home turf. This ingrained trait is also the reason otters are so slow at naturally repopulating the areas they once called home. Fish and Wildlife officials reintroduced small groups of otters from Alaska to the Oregon coast between 1969 and 1971 and then in California in the late 1980s. In both cases, no otters stayed, probably because most tried to swim back home and died. An effort on San Nicolas Island, off the coast of Southern California, almost failed after the original 125 otters dwindled down to 12, but those last animals persisted and today there are about 150 otters at San Nicolas.
The otter reintroduction was much more successful in southeast Alaska, where there are at least 23,000 sea otters — up from 450 otters that were introduced in the 1960s — and in British Columbia, with at least 8,000 sea otters. Professor Tim Tinker, the lead author of the Oregon feasibility study, emphasizes, “We know a lot more now. We won’t just release a group of otters and watch them die. That would be unthinkable today.” He is currently working on a model that lays out where repopulating sea otters would be most beneficial for the ecosystem and where they also would find the most conducive conditions along the California coast.
Where sea otter repopulation was successful, in Alaska the fuzzy, voracious bipeds have become so numerous in some areas that crab and shellfish fishers view them as unwanted competition. An industry-funded report attributes a loss of $28 million to the skilled furry shellfish hunters between 2005 and 2011.
The Elakha Alliance, which was founded by the late David Hatch, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, is working with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, tribes, shark specialists, environmental groups and fishery advocates along the coast to develop a reintroduction plan that considers all involved parties.
In Southeast Alaska, Tinker is part of a working group that includes federal and state biologists, crab fishermen, native experts, scientists and environmentalists. The working group meets monthly “to go over the latest science and talk about outreach issues,” Tinker shares. “It has been really successful. Because everyone is engaged, there’s no shouting. We have a productive dialogue where we can explore different solutions and it’s not just a bunch of people yelling at each other.”
This story was originally published by Reasons to be Cheerful.
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