Sea Otter Awareness Week
September 21 – 27, 2025
Annually, throughout the last full week of September, we celebrate sea otters during Sea Otter Awareness Week. We encourage zoological and educational institutions, governmental agencies and communities to plan and undertake events that highlight sea otters. These activities include sharing stories, disseminating science and generating media that inspire a deeper awareness of these unique marine mammals, their ecological importance and the many challenges they face.
Sea Otter Awareness Week is organized and sponsored by Defenders of Wildlife, Sea Otter Savvy, California Department of Parks and Recreation, the Elakha Alliance, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
2025 Theme: Anchored in Hope
Close your eyes and visualize a sea otter. In all likelihood, you will conjure an image of a fuzzy brown creature moored in surface kelp, taking a break from its role as a coastal influencer. This vision can help us feel peaceful and calm, even hopeful.
Our 2025 theme, “Anchored in Hope,” provides a metaphor for optimism, stability, and security in a challenging world.
As a keystone predator, sea otters regulate the biodiversity and resilience of kelp forests by controlling populations of kelp-eating animals. They symbolize the interconnections that sustain life in nearshore habitats. However, we must ensure the future of sea otters so that they can continue to paddle the nearshore waters and fulfill their foundational role in coastal habitats.
Mismanagement of coastal resources and human-caused climate change have caused a dramatic loss of kelp canopy along the Northern California and Oregon coasts, creating systemic imbalances and reducing biodiversity and biomass. The prospect of reintroducing sea otters to these damaged areas—restoring this top predator to places where it has remained absent for as long as two centuries—could offer an unparalleled strategy for helping restore and renew coastal ecosystems. Sea otters remind us that we need an interspecies etiquette that compels us to coexist with the natural world.
Hope exists! We can moor ourselves to it the same way that holdfasts anchor kelp stalks to the seafloor or sea otters enfold themselves in kelp fronds to rest. Then, just like the sea otter in our 2025 logo, we might find ourselves anchored, connected, and secured rather than lost at sea. Hope serves as our active response for combating despair over climate change, environmental degradation, and the alarming state of the world. Defenders and our Sea Otter Awareness Week partners invite everyone to emulate the sea otters by anchoring themselves in hope.
Calendar of Events
Keynote Webinar: “How to Be Hopeful: Empowering Practices to Overcome Despair and Act for Sea Otter Conservation”
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM PDT | Host: Defenders of Wildlife
elin kelsey, PhD
Many of us experience feelings of hopelessness, cynicism, despair, eco-anxiety, and an overwhelming sense that it’s already too late for our world. In this keynote, Dr. kelsey, an international environmental thought leader and scholar, will offer insights from the emerging field of climate emotions to help people navigate these complex feelings, and she’ll discuss the importance of evidence-based hope to sea otter conservation.
Sign-Up (coming soon!)
In-person Events and Activities Map
For in-person Sea Otter Awareness Week events and activities, click on the map to find an event near you!
Expand map by clicking the "View Larger Map" button in the upper-right corner.
The Extraordinary Sea Otter
Tour the special places that play a part in the past, present and future recovery of California's sea otters!
Check out these Live Sea Otter Cameras all year!
Detroit Zoo
Sea Otter Live Cam
Georgia Aquarium
Southern Sea Otter Webcam
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Sea Otter Cam
Oregon Coast Aquarium
Sea Otter Live Camera
Seattle Aquarium
Live Otter Cams
Vancouver Aquarium
Sea Otter Cams
Thank you to all of our partners and collaborators!
@seaottersavvy | @elakhaalliance | @defendersofwildlife | @montereybayaquarium | @themarinemammalcenter | @castateparks | @morrobaystateparks | @savingoceans | @kashiaepa | @tolowadeeni | @noyocenter | @sandiegozoo | @sonomacounty | @supervisorlyndahopkins | @pointreyes_prnsa | @Makamham
