How Do Sea Otters Work?

Sea otter populations, once endangered because of their super-cozy fur -- are doing a lot better these days. Learn how in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/sea-otter.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff Lauren Bogelbaum. Here. The sea otters are basically
the party animals of the sea. They're intelligent, rambunctious, chatty, curious, gregarious,
and they're unequivocally objectively on the definitive shortlist of cutest

(00:22):
adult animal whoever is keeping track of that inventory these days.
Their babies are also in the running for cutest baby animal,
which is saying something as the competition is much stiffer
in that division. And aside from their sparkling personalities and fluffy,
grinning faces, sea otters are also the glue that keeps
their ecosystem together. Sea otters are in the weasel family,

(00:46):
native to the North Pacific Ocean from California north along
the Pacific coasts and islands of Alaska and down the
eastern edge of the Kanchaca Peninsula of Russia. Since they
spend most of their lives bobbing around in chilly waters,
using rocks and things to break shellfish open on their bellies,
and they don't have a bunch of blubber to keep
them warm like seals and walruses do, sea otters possess

(01:09):
the densest fur in the animal kingdom. While you and
I probably have fewer than a hundred thousand hairs on
our entire heads, that many hairs can be found on
a single square inch that's six and a half square
centimeters of a sea otter's body, but what keeps them
cozy can be a liability in some cases. For the

(01:30):
article this episode is based on House to Work, spoke
with Terry M. Williams, professor in the Department of Ecology
and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz,
and she said the problem with the sea otters unique
fur is that it can't get dirty, so they spend
a lot of time grooming it to keep it clean.
The exon Veldez oil spill of killed more than a

(01:50):
thousand sea otters in Prince William's Sound because their fur
was contaminated with oil. Our team spent months cleaning them.
The bottom line, though, is oil and otters don't mix.
Aside from the fact that sea otter fur needs to
be kept clean and fluffable, or else it stops insulating
them and they freeze to death, humans have unfortunately noticed

(02:12):
how luxurious their coats are Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
the European fur trade decimated sea otter populations throughout their range.
By the early nineteen hundreds, about fifty California sea otters,
the subspecies living along the southern coast of California, remained
in the wild. But thanks to the International fur Seal

(02:33):
Treaty of nineteen eleven, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and
the Endangered Species Act of the nineteen seventies, California sea
otters were able to make a partial comeback. About three
thousand live on the California coast today. Williams said in California,
sea otters have reached carrying capacity in Monterey Bay. In
other words, there's just enough food for the sea otters

(02:55):
currently living there. For the population to grow, it would
need to move to a new area. However, white sharks
are believed to be keeping the otters from moving. In Alaska,
killer whales have taken out large numbers of the population
of sea otters along the Aleutian Islands. The picture is
happier in the Cordova area, where sea otters seem to
be booming thanks to that nose dive. In sea otter populations,

(03:19):
it's easy to see that these fuzzy marine goofballs are
actually extremely important to the ecology of the North Pacific Seashore.
For starters, their populations help make for healthy kelp forests,
the dense underwater jungles of tall algile strands the make
coastal marine ecosystems in the North Pacific what they are see.

(03:40):
Otters service every part of these kelp forests. Because they
have to eat a quarter to a third of their
body weight daily and spend between ten and twelve hours
each day finding food. Individuals within a population naturally sort
themselves into specialized eating groups or dietary guilds, the preferences
for which are asked from mother to pump. Which guild

(04:03):
and otter occupies has to do with the depth at
which it likes to find food. Some otters dive deep
and end up nabbing things like sea urchins and dungeness
crabs off the sea floor, while others find their favorite
foods at mid range depths of about forty feet that's
twelve meters, collecting small shellfish and worms. A third group
prefers to forage around in shallow waters for snails. In

(04:26):
this way, a population of sea otters can really work
the kelped forest at every level, helping it to stay
healthy and resilient in the way that only a top
predator can well. One way scientists have helped sea otters
make a comeback in California is by pairing orphaned otter
babies with captive surrogate moms that can't be released into

(04:46):
the wild. For the past thirty years, the Monterey Bay
Aquarium has been pairing stranded babies with adult female otters
in the aquariums Sea Autter Program, and the experiment has
been wildly successful. It turns out female sea otters are
more than happy to raise a baby that's not their own.
Since it started, in more than seven hundred adults and

(05:06):
puffs have moved through the Sea Outer program. Houst To
Works also spoke with Kyle Van Houtson, a chief scientist
at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He said, in our latest study,
we showed that surrogate reared otters in their offspring account
for over half the population growth in some areas. We're
just starting to see the extensive and positive impacts associated

(05:27):
with a growing and healthy outter population. Today, many of
our state's ecologically degraded estuaries could benefit from sea Otter's return.
So while we knew this was a great program and
a feel good story, now we know it's also great science.
There may come a time when you see more sea
otters frolicking in the waves off the coast of California.

(05:48):
But don't get too close, Williams said. Sea otters have
been nicknamed chainsaws in a Burlepp bag. They have enormously
powerful jaws, perfect for cracking the shells of clam and
easily breaking fingers. So as cute as otters look, they
can be unpredictable and can deliver a really nasty bite.
Give them wide space in the wild. Today's episode is

(06:15):
based on the article see Honors are the Party Animals
to see on how stuff works dot com, written by
Jesselyn Shields. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio
in partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it
is produced by Tyler Clang. Or more podcasts from my
heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.