Quick Take
As Sea Otter Awareness Week approaches, ocean activist Dan Haifley says we should support efforts to expand the southern sea otter’s geographic range and population, allowing them to counteract climate change and support biodiversity along a longer stretch of West Coast waters. He also gives a shoutout to Otter 841, Santa Cruz’s beloved, surfboard-riding dynamo.
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We in Santa Cruz County know a lot about Otter 841.
She’s the surfboard-riding phenom who was born in 2018 at UC Santa Cruz’s Coastal Science Campus and became famous in 2023, when she started nabbing (and sometimes chomping on) surfboards near Steamer Lane. Then, after evading capture for months and unleashing an 841 marketing flurry, she gave birth to a pup and wowed us again.
She’s been back in 2024, baby in tow.
It’s been quite a rush of publicity for our waters and for the cuteness and playfulness of otters. But what you might not know is that Otter 841 – and her 3,000 other southern sea otter pals who live in our region – are climate heroes.
They help to keep our kelp forests in balance by eating kelp-guzzling urchins. The kelp forests help buffer incoming ocean swells, reducing coastal erosion. They also sequester excess carbon and provide habitat for fish, sea stars, octopuses and crabs – in addition to those urchins.
Otters are – as we all know – adorable, with their back floats, furry faces and gleeful nature. They are also serious environmental stewards.
In Elkhorn Slough, they eat crabs, giving more sea slugs and isopods a chance. They graze the algae off eelgrass, leading to healthier and more abundant eelgrass beds, which means less erosion of creek bed banks.
To celebrate these amazing creatures, Defenders of Wildlife began an annual Sea Otter Awareness Week in 2003, and this year it will occur from Sept. 22-28. Other organizers include Sea Otter Savvy, California Department of Parks and Recreation, the Elakha Alliance, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Our sea otter population is not nearly what it used to be.
In 2022, Congress directed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to evaluate the possibility of reintroducing southern sea otters beyond their current range in Central California, to the rest of the state and Oregon. This would put the otters back closer to their historic range – back to where they lived before hunting and regulations caused their numbers to decrease to the point they were almost extinct.
The idea is to see if expanding the sea otters’ range can extend the benefits they provide to nearshore waters over hundreds more miles of coastline, hopefully making the ocean more resilient.
If Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary off Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties gets recognized this year as the sixth national marine sanctuary, its professional team and their partners would provide support for the effort to extend otters’ range.
Indigenous leaders and tribal governments are pushing for this. The Elakha Alliance is a coalition of tribal, nonprofit, and conservation leaders seeking to repopulate otters along the Oregon coast over the next 50 years. The Kashia Band of Pomo Indians, the first inhabitants of coastal Sonoma County, are working toward otter repopulation north of their current range. The Center for Biological Diversity submitted a petition for reintroduction to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year.
This is exciting and necessary work.
So far the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has concluded that reintroduction in Oregon and northern California is feasible, and that Southern California can be repopulated by sea otters living at Point Conception or San Nicolas Island.
The agency is still gathering input, and you can learn more and get involved here.
What we don’t realize today is that southern otters like 841 almost went extinct. In fact, in the 1900s, scientists thought they were extinct, until a small group appeared near Bixby Creek in Big Sur in 1938. Their population expanded with the help of influential friends, including the Carmel-based Friends of the Sea Otter, which lobbied for state and federal protections for the fuzzy creatures.
These days, the U.S. Geological Survey has pegged the southern sea otter population at around 3,000. Most live between Pigeon Point in San Mateo County and Point Conception in Santa Barbara County, although on a recent trip to Oregon, I’d read two male otters had been spotted off that state’s Cannon Beach. There’ve also been multiple sightings off Southern California.
More than 300 years ago, more than 300,000 sea otters lived off Japan, Siberia and Alaska, and the western North American coast south to Baja California. Scientists think there were 16,000 from Oregon to northern Mexico until hunters began killing them for their fur in the 1700s.
Still, the current population remains vulnerable; some have died from toxins from inland lakes, some from shark attacks. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, many were entangled in gill and trammel fishing nets. Those got outlawed in waters 360 feet deep from Point Reyes to Point Arguello in 2000.
From 1987 to 1990, U.S Fish and Wildlife Service employees moved 140 otters to San Nicolas Island to make them less vulnerable to spills from oil drilling and tanker traffic. Sadly, many swam home, or died trying. The remaining population was less than 20, but today it’s around 100.
Offshore oil producers opposed relocation, as did the U.S. Navy (which uses the island) and harvesters who compete with otters for urchins and abalone. The agency agreed to ban sea otters from waters south of Point Conception, which in 1987 became known as the “no otter zone.” If any wandered into the zone, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had to move them back.
In 2013, the agency stopped enforcing the zone, prompting a lawsuit. Fortunately, the wildlife service prevailed, so sea otters can now move south without breaking the law.
U.S. Geological Survey scientist Tim Tinker told me 10 years ago that California’s steep offshore coastal shelf creates a narrow strip of habitat for sea otters, which has limited their recovery. I’d argue that expanding their range north and south can keep them viable while boosting their population, and the benefits they provide.
An expanded sea otter range and population will also support increased kelp abundance, benefitting fish such as rockfish, greenling, juvenile salmon and herring, invertebrates that live and feed on kelp, and large predators such as harbor seals and sea birds. An expanded range will also help counteract the effects of climate change.
If you agree, then please let the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service know you support southern sea otter reintroduction. Otters – including 841 and her pup – need our help.
Dan Haifley was executive director of Save Our Shores and O’Neill Sea Odyssey and currently serves on the board of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. His views are his own, and he can be reached at dan.haifley@gmail.com.