Sea Otters: Cute ‘Teddy Bears’ at Center of Storm

Ron Jameson spends a good deal of each working day peering through a 50-power telescope at teddy bears that swim--those furry little fuzzies known as California sea otters.

The creatures float lazily on their backs, delighting tourists and naturalists, oblivious to the clouds of an encroaching political storm gathering over their heads.

“What you have is two animals trying to occupy the same niche at the same time,” said Jameson, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

On one side of a burgeoning controversy are the millions of shellfish that occupy California waters and the struggling fishermen who depend on them for a living. On the other are the sea otters, which look like teddy bears but eat like elephants.

“They’re very appealing,” said Jameson, 45, who has been watching the otters for eight years from this government research station nine miles north of San Simeon. “They’re cuddly, they’re cute, they’re furry, and they do things that human beings have a lot of regard for, like take good care of their young.”

But there is another side to the animals often overlooked by those enamored of what detractors scoffingly refer to as the “cuddle factor.” Mammals with ferocious appetites, they consume up to 25% of their average 44- to 64-pound body weight each day in abalone, sea urchins, clams and other commercially valuable shellfish.

The controversy over the sea otters is locking powerful forces up and down the state in a battle that touches both science and politics. And it is likely to erupt into bitter public debate at a series of hearings beginning Wednesday.

At issue is a federal government proposal to spend millions of dollars moving as many as 250 otters from their present mainland habitat--a 220-mile stretch from just north of Monterey to just south of Morro Bay--to the waters of San Nicolas Island, a dot of land 80 miles off the Southern California coast. The object is to protect the species from the potentially devastating effects of an oil spill by dividing the herd into two groups.

“What we’re doing is not putting all of our eggs in one basket,” Jameson explained. “If something happens to the population on the coast, we will still have a safe population” at San Nicolas.

Pushing the proposal is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and various environmental groups wishing to see the otters thrive. Opposing it are representatives of the commercial shellfish industry and sport diving organizations who predict dire ecological and economic consequences should the plan prevail. And somewhere in the middle is the oil industry, which sees pros and cons on both sides.

“The hearings will be heated,” Diane Pleschner, a frequent spokeswoman for those opposing the translocation, predicted of the public forums scheduled for Wednesday in Brookings, Ore.; Sept. 22 in Monterey, and Sept. 24 in Ventura.

The origins of the situation go back about 200 years. Biologists say that the California sea otter herd, which once numbered almost 20,000, was reduced to a mere 50 animals at the turn of the century by hunters seeking their furs. Only after the hunting was outlawed in 1911 did the otters begin replenishing, increasing at a rate of about 5% a year.

By 1976, according to Jameson, the herd had reached its present count of 1,700 to 1,800. Then growth stopped. And the very next year, alarmed by this abrupt turn of events, the U.S. government listed the species as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Several steps were taken.

One of them involved a series of restrictions placed in 1984 and 1985 on the use of gill nets, a fishnet designed to catch halibut but frequently lethal to sea otters. Experts determined that widespread use of the nets in shallow coastal waters had contributed significantly to the decline in the otter’s growth rate.

Another is the proposed relocation.

While federal officials admit they have no proof that any otters have ever been killed by oil spills, they say the species is highly vulnerable to such accidents and has already weathered several close calls. Because recent years have seen dramatic increases in offshore drilling and tanker transports, they say, the danger to the otters is acute with a 60% chance that some will be killed.

“It’s only a matter of time,” said Carol Fulton, executive director of Friends of the Sea Otter, a Carmel-based environmental group that claims 4,500 members nationwide and strongly supports the translocation. “We know we can’t eliminate the oil spill danger--this is an attempt to dilute it. It’s like an insurance policy.”

Relocation proponents point to successful precedents for what they want to do in Washington state, British Columbia and Alaska. An attempted relocation in Oregon, they say, failed because an insufficient number of animals were involved.

Reasons for Choice

The government is proposing San Nicolas as the relocation site, Jameson said, because the island is believed to be one of the historic homes of the California sea otter and thus a good habitat. In addition, he said, it is sufficiently removed from the mainland and other islands to greatly reduce the likelihood of the otters wandering off. It also provides a good vantage point from which to observe the animals and will be less affected economically than comparable sites in Northern California or Southern Oregon.

But a draft environmental impact statement released by the government last month indicates that there would indeed be economic costs. The introduction of sea otters to the waters surrounding San Nicolas Island, the report says, would result in a decrease in the population of invertebrate species--particularly abalone, sea urchins and spiny lobsters--so dramatic that the island’s commercial and recreational shell fisheries would be virtually wiped out within five years.

Because San Nicolas provides about 11% of the abalone and spiny lobster caught by commercial fishermen based in Santa Barbara, the report says, the loss to the industry would be $142,000 annually. In addition, according to the report, the translocation would reduce annual income derived from sport diving by about $35,500. And the regional economy as a whole would experience a yearly loss of about $1.4 million.

The report characterizes these losses as “very low.” Opponents of the relocation plan disagree.

Slow Squeeze Seen

“There will be a slow squeeze,” said Pleschner, who edits the newsletter of the California Abalone Assn., which represents 130 commercial abalone divers statewide. “There will be people who will be squeezed out of the industry,” in addition to the partial loss of the shellfish seafood that she believes to be increasingly important to the California diet.

Steve Rebuck, spokesman for Save Our Shellfish, an ad hoc coalition of organizations opposed to the relocation, says the issue goes even deeper than its immediate effect on commercial or sport shell fishermen and their customers or friends.

“I grew up in Morro Bay and my father was an abalone diver,” Rebuck said. “We’ve lived with the impact of the sea otter for 30 years and I would hate to see those islands (near San Nicolas) become the wasteland that we have up here (in Central California.)” Shell fishermen have virtually abandoned this area, once abundant with abalone and other shellfish.

Given that sea otters now number about 200,000 in Alaska, he said, they should not even be considered threatened. The recent gill net legislation, he said, eliminated the last major obstacle to the California otter’s growth. And in the unlikely event that the animals ever really are wiped out by an oil spill, replacements could be imported from the north.

While most agree that the Alaskan sea otter constitutes the same species as its California counterpart, biologists say, there is some argument over whether the physiological and behavioral differences between the two are significant enough to be regarded as belonging to separate subspecies. Those favoring translocation tend to maximize the differences, while those opposing it tend to minimize them.

Called a Hoax

“We think the whole thing is a very expensive hoax,” Rebuck said of the sea otters’ threatened status. The full effect of the proposed relocation may not be known until years from now when the relocated animals, he believes, would spread from San Nicolas to neighboring Channel Islands and to the entire Southern California coast.

It was precisely to counter such fears--that relocation would result in the uncontrolled spread of the sea otter population--that the government made what it considered a major concession in the current proposal. Specifically, according to Skip Ladd, project leader in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s office of sea otter coordination, the service has pledged to contain the otters north of Point Conception and within the immediate vicinity of San Nicolas Island. Any otters found meandering outside those zones, he said, would be physically captured and returned.

“The fishermen have been favoring some kind of zonal management system for years,” Ladd said. “This is their chance to get it. Basically what we would do is set aside Southern California--except for San Nicolas--for shell fisheries. That won’t happen if we don’t do the translocation.”

It’s a carrot of sufficient succulence to have brought at least one state agency--the California Department of Fish and Game--into tentative alignment with the federal government.

Called a Trade-Off

“Looking at the various alternatives,” said Bill Maxwell, the department’s marine resources supervisor, “this may be the only one that’s viable. The alternative is not to support relocation, in which case it’s only a matter of time until the existing otter population expands into Southern California and impacts recreational and commercial fisheries. We see this as the only way to get a trade-off for some kind of zonal management in the foreseeable future. The trade-off is, you give up San Nicolas Island.”

Ironically, whether the compromise ever actually materializes may depend on events in Washington. Because the existing Endangered Species Act precludes the intentional zonal management of sea otters, the relocation is presently being proposed as “experimental,” which opponents fear may mean it could eventually be abandoned without regard to the long-term environmental effects.

In order to support relocation, Maxwell said, his department would require congressional amendments--also favored by the Fish and Wildlife Service--that would not only allow but guarantee the restriction of the existing sea otter herd to points above Point Conception. Such legislation has already passed the House, Maxwell said, and will soon be considered by the Senate.

While the state and federal agencies discuss the merits of the proposal, a third interested party--the oil industry--is studying the issue to determine its best interests. “We are neutral,” said Kit Armstrong, chairman of the Western Oil And Gas Assn.’s sea otter task force.

Restrictions on Drilling

On the one hand, she said, the industry recognizes that the relocation could lessen the pressures against oil drilling in the existing sea otter range. But it could also increase regulatory statutes aimed at protecting the animals from drilling in any new areas to which they spread, an outcome the industry opposes.

“We need to review the draft environmental impact statement . . . to evaluate whether the potential benefits outweigh the risks,” Armstrong said. Although the industry will probably take a position on the matter before the end of the year, she said, “right now there are just a lot of pieces to this whole puzzle that we don’t understand.”

Meanwhile preparations at Piedras Blancas and elsewhere continue. Fish and Wildlife Service officials say they hope to move the first animals--a group of about 70 young otters--in the fall of 1987. After being captured by net from small boats, they say, the animals will be kept in large holding tanks until they can be transported in refrigerated boxcars to San Luis Obispo and then by airplane to San Nicolas Island. Officials say they hope to ship as many as 70 additional animals each year until the relocated population reaches 250. “The trick is to keep them cool,” Jameson said. “If they get too hot, they’re gone.”

Ladd estimates the cost of the project at about $1 million a year for the first three to five years. After this month’s public hearings, he said, all interested parties will have 95 days in which to comment, after which a final decision on the matter will be made by the Interior Department.

Emotional Factor

Even Pleschner admits that those opposed to the move have an uphill fight. “There’s too much emotionalism involved,” she said. “That’s where people get off the track: It’s the appeal of the sea otters.”

And indeed, the cuddle factor seems to play a significant role, even among the biologists and administrators who deal with the issue every day.

Jameson, probably as intimately acquainted with sea otters as any man in the state, sees the controversy as a struggle between competing forces of nature. But he sees no conflict in allowing man to help determine the outcome.

“Society makes certain decisions regarding priorities,” he said. “What we’re doing is what the law mandates.”

For the average Californian, both sides agree, the issue boils down to a choice between certain succulent seafoods and the teddy bears.

Jameson views it as no contest. “People like teddy bears,” he said.