Return of the Sea Otter

by Todd McLeish

  Everything changed, however, when an adult female sea otter arrived at the aquarium in 2001. Given the name Toola, she was found to have toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by a parasite found in infected prey and resulting in a neurological disorder that manifests in grand mal seizures. While the aquarium treated her for several months, it was discovered that she was pregnant, and she eventually gave birth to a stillborn pup, which is a common symptom of toxoplasmosis. In what Mayer described as “extraordinarily fortuitous circumstances,” a two-week-old male pup was discovered stranded on Del Monte Beach in Monterey just twelve hours after Toola gave birth. Although aquarium officials had discussed the possibility of eventually attempting to raise stranded pups with a surrogate mother, and they had even tried it once, they could not have arranged it any better. Toola was ready to care for a pup, and the pup was in need of a mother to take care of him. So Toola’s stillborn pup was pulled away from her and replaced with the stranded pup—called Otter 217—and the two immediately began nursing. “We essentially had the prototype surrogacy unfold before our eyes,” Mayer said.

  This unplanned experiment spawned what has become a tremendously successful and scientifically proven method of raising young pups in captivity and releasing them into the wild. “The most important thing we realized about the developmental process is the bond with mom. The environment they’re reared in is less important,” Mayer said. “Even though it’s a very difficult transition they have to make into an unfamiliar ocean environment, they instinctually will make that transition. But the biggest factor for their success is eliminating the human habituation. That wound up being the biggest detriment to the survival of the pups.”

  Pups are usually introduced to their surrogate mother at about eight weeks of age, and they remain together for four or five months before weaning. The first step is to remove the surrogate from the public exhibit several days before being introduced to the pup. The surrogacy process is somewhat stressful and energy demanding for the mother, so she is given extra attention throughout. She is placed into the surrogacy tank about twenty-four hours before the pup arrives to give her time to acclimate. “When the females come off the exhibit, it’s a little bit of a negative for them,” Mayer said. “The exhibit is kind of their happy place, and behind the scenes oftentimes isn’t as much. We don’t want the pup going in when she might be more likely to interpret the pup as being associated with that negative change, so there has to be a gap time.” When the pup is first dropped into the tank with the surrogate, they are watched closely to see what happens. Sometimes they bond immediately; more often it takes a little time. The caretakers can sometimes use food to get the two animals to interact with each other. Some precocious pups have been known to dive and feed independently and the surrogate ends up being nothing more than a companion animal.

  Mayer said that the more typical situation is that the pup initially becomes very focused on the female, following her around and nudging her, which causes the surrogate to try to avoid the pup. After a few hours of that, they may be separated before trying again the next day. And the next. Eventually they form a bond, but there is considerable variability from pup to pup and from surrogate to surrogate. Rosa, who had just completed the surrogacy of her twelfth pup when I visited, is very predictable. She apparently knows what is expected of her, and she bonds quickly with each new pup. The other current surrogates are new to the process, so their maternal behaviors vary. Abby, who was with her third pup at the time of my visit, was not sharing food with her pup, although she had with the previous one. And sometimes things change within one surrogacy, as when Abby started out with little interest in a pup, then became very maternal, and later lost interest again, as if she wanted the process to be over.

  Regardless of the variations in the process, the surrogacy program has been tremendously successful. More than thirty pups have been raised by nine surrogate mothers and released into the wild, and about 70 percent of those released have survived the first year, which is about equivalent to the pup survival rate in the wild population and well above the 10 to 15 percent success rate using the prior hand-rearing method.

  Otter pups are released about four to eight weeks after being weaned and two to four weeks after having a transmitter implanted and flipper tag attached. During those last few weeks before release, the animals are kept in a tank with several other otters to learn how to interact in a setting more analogous to their life in the wild. But the release process can be complicated. It doesn’t always work the first time. They sometimes can’t find food and quickly lose energy, or they wander into a marsh or other habitat in which they are unlikely to survive, or they run into predators or other difficulties. They have only a three- or four-day window of time to figure out all those things before their body starts to shut down. So before they’re too far gone, the animal may be recaptured and rehabilitated for a few weeks before being released again, when the success rate climbs from 40 to 70 percent. Those few that still struggle and need to be recaptured again are nearly always successful on the third release.

  “Part of the goal of our surrogacy studies has been to really define success by as rigorous a criteria as we could,” Mayer said. “With our guys, we’ve followed some of the surrogate-reared animals for more than eleven years, so we’ve got a long-term data set with an increasing sample size.” That tracking has found that the surrogate-raised female pups have gone on to give birth to more than twenty-five pups of their own, and the survival rate of those pups matches that of the rest of the wild population. It’s a success story of which Mayer and all those involved are rightfully proud.

  * * *

  THE MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM has been a major player in sea otter research for many years. Its veterinarian, Mike Murray, has surgically implanted transmitters in nearly every sea otter that is part of any research project in California. And biologist Michelle Staedler and her crew of volunteers and interns handle the daily tracking of those animals year in and year out. Graduate students from several universities regularly get access to the captive and stranded otters for any number of research projects, and Murray and the aquarium staff conduct veterinary and husbandry studies to better understand sea otter health and how best to care for them. It’s an expensive undertaking, partly because of the large quantity of food each captive otter must eat.

  But Andy Johnson, who leads the aquarium’s Sea Otter Research and Conservation program, is always pushing to do more. He has been working with sea otters for more than thirty years, starting at SeaWorld in San Diego and later at the Vancouver Aquarium before landing in Monterey in 1998. While he’s proud of the important role the aquarium plays, he notes that much of what it accomplishes is done with an informal alliance he helped establish to study and conserve sea otters in California; it includes scientists at UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Geological Survey, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Johnson describes the alliance as an interdependent group that works together to achieve whatever needs to be accomplished. The alliance relies on Tim Tinker to synthesize existing research to determine what questions need to be answered next, and it pools its resources to get it done.

  Johnson said that the aquarium doesn’t ignore the policy arena, either. All the research in the world won’t protect sea otters if regulators and government officials make decisions that place the animals in harm’s way. The aquarium works with Friends of the Sea Otter, Defenders of Wildlife, and whoever else it can recruit to help pass legislation to benefit otters. These groups worked together, for instance, to establish the California Sea Otter Fund, a mechanism on California state income tax forms that enables the public to donate to support sea otter research and conservation. Since 2007 it has provided about $300,000 each year for competitive research grants and state conservation efforts, including a pathology program that determines the cause of death of otters that wash ashore. A bill to reauthorize the fund for another five years was passed by t
he California legislature in 2015.

  My first visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium occurred during Sea Otter Awareness Week in mid-September, when it was clear to everyone in attendance that sea otters are aquarium superstars. Hundreds of visitors lined up well before the aquarium opened, and as they filed inside they quickly came face to face with three sea otters housed in a two-story tank. Crowds of people standing six or seven deep around ten windows watched as Gidget, Ivy, and Kit went about their daily activities—diving, grooming, and rolling around. When the formal feeding program began, the adult humans watching were just as excited as the children. Cooing and giggling and more cooing were the typical reactions from observers of all ages and genders. I couldn’t keep track of how many times I heard the visitors say the word “cute,” but it was a lot.

  The sea otter aquarists, as the staff are called, dragged large quantities of ice cubes to the edge of the exhibit, causing the otters to go into a playful frenzy, racing around the pool and leaping atop each other in what appeared to be a childlike effort to be first in line for a treat. As I watched from a behind-the-scenes observation platform, the ice was unceremoniously dumped into the water, and the animals thrashed about gathering as much of it as they could. One otter carried several ice chunks on her belly while holding one cube in each hand and chewing on another. A different otter protected a cube from thievery by stashing it in a pouch in her armpit, then dived to the bottom of the pool with her mouth full to quietly enjoy her booty. Their unbounded excitement, like a child’s first moments at an amusement park, was contagious among those of us watching, causing the noise level in the building to rise markedly.

  Soon the animals tired of the ice and looked like they were expecting something more. They gathered at the edge of the tank as the aquarists walked out on a rocky platform and fed them fish and clams by tossing the food onto the otters’ bellies. Feeding-time behavior was the polar opposite of their previous behavior. The otters seemed entirely focused on filling their stomachs. While ice was a plaything, food was a meal. Instead of racing around and splashing, they calmly placed each morsel in their mouth, chewed and swallowed, and then waited for delivery of the next one. They paid no attention to the hordes of noisy visitors pounding on the glass tank, focusing instead on not dropping any crumbs—and when they inevitably did, they quickly dived to the bottom to retrieve them before surfacing for the rest of their meal.

  Later, several plastic objects were tossed into the water, including a blue barrel that they aggressively clambered into and out of in what appeared to be a race through an obstacle course. The items were clearly intended as playthings, and the otters knew it. They chased and slapped each other, played a combination of keep-away and king of the hill, and scuffled and tussled until they were exhausted. Their high energy and nonstop activity made me exhausted, too.

  So I wandered around the aquarium to a number of exhibits about sea otter research and physiology, then entered an auditorium to watch a short film about a rescued otter named Luna, whose first appearance on screen received a chorus of oohs and aahs from the audience. Before the video started, the man who introduced the program declared, “It’s a scientific fact that sea otters are cute.” No one in the audience disagreed.

  * * *

  BACK ON THE ROOF of the aquarium, Mayer gathered three helpers to move four juvenile otters from one tank to another so the first tank could be cleaned. Despite the large size of the outdoor tanks, they hold just two feet of water because the roof of the aquarium cannot support any more weight than that. Once the otters had been relocated, it was time to groom the youngest otter again. According to Mayer, pup grooming requires multiple steps. Large towels are used to dry the outer guard hairs, while smaller towels are used to groom the fine, dense inner fur. Flea combs and hairbrushes are used next to fluff up the fur, and finger grooming massages the fur into layers and helps to remove mats in the fur. “The process stimulates them to do it on their own,” he said. “Eventually they will instinctively do it themselves.” But because humans are not as efficient groomers as wild otters, captive otter pups tend to have more bad hair days than wild ones do. “Wild moms are much more proficient at it than we are,” Mayer added.

  Ever since I first learned that otter pups must be taught by their mothers to groom themselves and that rescued otters are taught by human surrogates, I have imagined that the job of baby otter groomer at the aquarium may be the most desirable occupation on earth. While I was not allowed to groom Otter 679 myself, I did get to wear the Darth Vader gear and stand beside Mayer as he did the deed. And it was just as adorable and heartbreaking as I envisioned. Mayer lifted the tiny pup from the water and carried her like a football to a platform beside the intensive care unit tank, where he placed the otter on her back on a towel and fed her a dose of medicine from a syringe. She sat quietly looking like a child’s stuffed animal until Mayer inserted a needle beneath her skin to deliver a large quantity of supplemental formula, which caused the infant otter to cry in loud, high-pitched wails. But as soon as he removed the needle, Otter 679—who would be transferred to SeaWorld in San Diego a month later and renamed Pumpkin—stopped crying and appeared to relax completely. Mayer took the edges of the towel the otter lay on and began a gentle process of rubbing the animal in short strokes from her head to her belly to her barely noticeable tail. He rolled her over to continue the process on her back, then finished the first round with a brief foot massage. Then he took a hairbrush to carefully work out the small matted spots in her fur, which caused her to squirm a bit. When Mayer placed the brush beside her to grab another towel, the animal leaned over and rubbed her chin on the brush herself. Despite her squirming, the brushing was obviously something she enjoyed. Another round of rubbing with the towel led Otter 679 to nudge Mayer’s hand with her nose before lying back again to relax. She occasionally emitted a soft squeal like a whiny two-year-old child, as if the rubbing was uncomfortable, but the bleating became almost unbearable when Mayer set her in the water to float for a few minutes. At that moment, there was nothing I wanted more than to ease her discomfort. Instead, Mayer did so by removing Otter 679 from the water and giving her one more rubdown with the towel. Then it was time for more brushing, including on a spot behind her head that quieted her down completely. After turning on an overhead air dryer, Mayer finished by brushing the pup one more time. She shook her head once, then curled up and promptly fell asleep. The experience was the most precious fifteen minutes of my year.

  Chapter 6: Stranded

  HOMER, ALASKA

  THREE THOUSAND miles northwest of Monterey lies the city of Homer, Alaska, which is somewhat of an anomaly in the state. Long called the halibut-fishing capital of the world and, more recently, the “cosmic hamlet by the sea,” the community of five thousand people lies at the very end of the road in south-central Alaska on the shores of Kachemak Bay; it is the southernmost town in the Alaska highway system. It’s a community filled with a mix of fishermen and artists and those who depend on tourists for their living, with many divergent viewpoints among them, so its residents may be among the most liberal in a rather conservative state.

  Homer’s most distinguishing feature is the Homer Spit, a four-and-a-half-mile-long geological feature extending into Kachemak Bay that was recently called one of the one hundred best beaches in the United States. And while it’s crammed full of restaurants, tourist shops, and marinas, it’s also an ideal place to watch for seabirds, shorebirds, and marine mammals in the bay and along the shoreline. The tides are huge in Homer, with a gain of more than twenty feet at high tide, and low tides leave mudflats extending a quarter mile and more out from the wrack line. It’s a great place to look for sea otters.

  On our first drive out on the spit, Renay and I had several distant views of otters that were mostly loafing on their backs. On our next trip, we walked around the southernmost point, called Land’s End, and while we had an excellent view of a Steller sea lion, there was an unexpected absenc
e of otters. Unexpected because Homer has one of the highest densities of sea otters in the world. As a result, it’s also the place in Alaska where the largest numbers of otters wash ashore dead, dying, or separated from their mothers.

  We were in Homer in late May to meet Marc Webber, the deputy manager of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and one of the lead volunteers for the Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Like its counterpart in California, it responds to reports of stranded seals, sea lions, sea otters, and occasionally other species found on the entire coast of Alaska. Most of the reports are of otters, and most come from the Homer area because of its high number of beach walkers and its community-wide concern for the well-being of wildlife. Webber said the stranding network is mostly a waiting game for the volunteers, who wait for members of the public to call about a stranded animal, although in summer an intern routinely visits the beaches and the spit to look for otters. When we visited, Webber led us back out to the spit in search of stranded otters. A brief scan with our binoculars at several of the usual places revealed no dead otters, but we did see a few live ones, though not nearly as many as I had anticipated.

  We ended up at Land’s End again on a sixty-degree, sunny afternoon to watch for whatever wildlife we could find. Blacklegged kittiwakes actively dived and swooped around a rip current where bait fish or some other edibles must have been just below the surface, and occasionally a few ducks—mostly white-winged scoters—and cormorants flew by. It wasn’t long before otters began to appear. The first one was too far out to see well, and it disappeared shortly as it drifted with the current. A second otter gave us a much better look at itself. Its head was distinctively pale down to its shoulders, suggesting that it was an older animal. The otter repeatedly switched from swimming on its belly to porpoising briefly underwater, then rolling onto its back for a momentary bit of grooming, then whirling back to its belly again. And when it dived, it appeared to jump straight upward—much higher than I expected—before U-turning into a vertical dive, like my early days of doing a jackknife off the diving board at home. It was highly entertaining to watch.