A World of Otters!

A year ago, as a new hire at Defenders, I took the opportunity on World Otter Day 2020 to introduce myself and share the various ways that Defenders would be working to expand our involvement in sea otter conservation. Now it’s World Otter Day 2021, and as a grizzled Defenders veteran—well, I was pretty grizzled before I came to Defenders—I feel as though we’ve gathered momentum with our sea otter programs and can participate in meaningful ways to protect these animals throughout their full range.

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Noelle Guernsey

Of course, World Otter Day celebrates all 13 species of otter, from the diminutive Asian small-clawed otter of Malaysia to the giant otter of Brazil and the North American river otter to the sea otter in the North Pacific. As apex predators within the various environments they inhabit, sea otters and river otters help establish diversity within those ecosystems. But all otter species remain challenged by human activity. Human-caused climate change alters prey availability for otters, our commercial activities—shipping, farming, fishing, trucking, etc.—crisscross and pollute otter habitat, and our recreational activities can disturb or displace otters. If we intend to live in relative harmony with otters and other wildlife, we need to recognize and appreciate what they need to survive, how we make their lives more challenging and when we cause them harm. 

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Lilian Carswell/USFWS

In Southeast Alaska, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has established a sea otter stakeholder working group to develop a plan for managing identified conflicts among sea otters and commercial and Tribal shellfish operations in the region. This group will focus on sea otter coexistence conflicts in Southeast Alaska. Joining the group is Defenders’ Alaska Marine Representative, Katy Bear Nalven, she will bring her energy, creativity and reasoned ideas in service of sea otters!

We’ve also started engaging in a more direct way with the Elakha Alliance to evaluate the ecological and economic feasibility of reintroducing sea otters to Oregon. Defenders’ Northwest program director Kathleen Gobush has joined Elakha’s advisory council to offer guidance and review the alliance’s scientific work. Defenders has a keen interest in seeing sea otters restored to the waters of northern California and all of Oregon, where they have been absent for more than a century. Kathleen and her teammate Sristi Kamal also hope to conduct community- and decision-maker outreach on the restoration concept and the important role sea otters play in maintaining biodiverse marine and nearshore ecosystems.

Because the pandemic restricted in-person gatherings, to continue sea otter protection and management discussions, Defenders and our partners at Sea Otter Savvy and FWS organized a virtual Southern Sea Otter Alliance Meeting in January. The two-day session allowed this group to reconnect, exchange updates, review research opportunities and discuss recovery strategies for sea otters in California. 

Defenders also planned and hosted the 2021 Sea Otter Research and Conservation Symposium with the Seattle Aquarium in early April. This two-day symposium brought together hundreds of sea otter biologists, agency managers, veterinarians, advocates, technicians, academics, caregivers and graduate students—in essence, the worldwide sea otter conservation community—to hear the latest about sea otter demographics, health, ecology, genetics, management and outreach. To make sure that we tempered our serious work with a bit of fun, Defenders hosted an evening event called “Paint a Sea Otter,” and an artist instructed attendees via Zoom how to create their own sea otter painting. (I’d say the event was more fun than a barrel of otters, but given the snarly nature of these sea weasels, that wouldn’t be much fun at all.) The artist’s example and few of the finished paintings appear below.