The Luckless Sea Otter (October 1970 | Volume: 21, Issue: 6)

The Luckless Sea Otter

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October 1970 | Volume 21, Issue 6

Is it possible to begrudge the natural appetite of a rare, fun-loving aquatic mammal that opens shellfish with a rock, takes exemplary care of its pups, and sleeps belly-up on a sea mattress, anchored by a strand of seaweed? Evidently so: commercial abalone fishermen, alarmed by the slow spread of the California sea otter into their customary fishing grounds, indict this animal for destroying abalone beds. They are pressing for legislation to permit the otter to be “harvested” (i.e., hunted under regulation for commercial purposes) or “managed” (relocated or limited in number). Indeed, some eager hunters have not waited for legislation. Despite the fact that the California sea otter, Enhydra lutris nereis , is listed as rare by the U.S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife and is protected by California law within a three-mile limit and by federal law beyond it, dead otters whose bodies show bullet holes or club wounds sometimes wash up on California beaches. Last year the abalone fishermen sought permission to use small underwater explosives in order to suggest to the animals that they would be happier elsewhere. Conservationists are gravely concerned about such tactics, for the ranks of Enhydra lutris nereis are thin—at last count, 1,040.

In pre-Columbian times the clear coastal waters of California were abundant in both sea otter and abalone. The large, single-shelled abalone flourished on kelp, the common floating strands of bottom-rooted brown seaweed, some over one hundred feet in length. The sea otter used the beds of kelp as a year-round home and enjoyed a menu featuring abalone, sea urchins, and other shellfish.

Long before the first European explorer, Juan Rodn’guez Cabrillo, sailed up the Pacific coast, the Indians of the Aleutian Islands had discovered the virtues of sea-otter skins for clothing and adornment. But it was not until 1741, when the Danish explorer Vitus Bering led a Russian expedition to Alaska across the frigid sea named for him, that the sea otter had the ill luck to excite the white man’s interest. Its pelt is warmer and denser than the best Russian sable. And when the explorers were wrecked on one of the Commander Islands off Kamchatka Peninsula, they found the beaches teeming with prospective fur coats for the kings, nobles, and tycoons of Russia, China, and Europe. It was like striking gold.

Georg Wilhelm Steller, a German naturalist who was travelling with the Bering expedition, took time to note a few things about the animals besides their fur: during courtship “the male caresses the female by stroking her, using the fore feet as hands … she, however, often pushes him away from her for fun and in simulated coyness, as it were, and plays with her offspring like the fondest mother. Their love for their young is so intense that for them they expose themselves to the most manifest danger of death. When [their young are] taken away from