U.S. May Override State Ban of Otters : Wildlife: A federal agency insists on sending 18 more animals to San Nicolas. But California officials say the plan for a colony has failed.

Federal and state agencies may be headed for a showdown over whether more threatened California sea otters will be moved to San Nicolas Island.

A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official said Thursday that the agency plans to override a state directive and move up to 18 more otters from the main Northern California population to remote San Nicolas Island, 60 miles southwest of Point Mugu.

The state Fish and Game Commission told the federal government in August that its three-year program had failed to set up a spinoff otter colony to preserve the species in the event the main population is wiped out by an oil spill.

The commission also rejected a federal request for a permit to move 18 more animals, which have radio implants inside their abdominal cavities, to the island.

Since the $3-million program began, 137 otters have been captured and moved to San Nicolas Island, but only about 15 otters remain. Another 30 have swum back to their home range, a 200-mile stretch of coastal water off the Monterey Peninsula. Nine have been found dead and 80 are unaccounted for.

But the program is not a failure, said Marvin L. Plenert, Fish and Wildlife Service regional director. Scientists need more time and more animals to study to complete their research, he said.

Plenert said he will send a letter today advising the state of his agency’s plan to go forward with the relocation program.

“I believe we have the authority to go through with this,” Plenert said from his regional headquarters in Oregon. “I’m just going to flat tell them that we plan to do it.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service must still obtain approval from its permits section and a separate board, the Marine Mammals Commission, Plenert said. But he said the state Fish and Game Commission should be advised of the plan upfront.

Robert Treanor, the state Fish and Game Commission’s executive officer, predicted Thursday that the five commissioners, a board appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian, will object to moving more animals to the island.

“The commission felt that the goals and objectives had not been met,” Treanor said of the federal relocation program. “The commission was very concerned with the number of otters that were unaccounted for, so they didn’t want to add to the mortality of the otter population.”

Treanor said he planned to approach the state attorney general’s office on the commission’s options for preventing the probable federal action.

Plenert said in August that his agency planned to comply with the state’s ban on moving more otters to the island. But he said he changed his mind after the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Sea Otter Recovery Team, a group of marine biologists and scientists who advise the service on sea otters, recommended that the program be continued.

“The scientists are the experts,” Plenert said.

Only one otter now has a radio transmitter implanted inside its abdominal cavity. But more animals with radio transmitters need to be moved to the island so that scientists can better study the animals’ habits, said Carl Benz, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s sea otter recovery coordinator based in Ventura.

“We know that otters are very individualistic,” he said. “So we need a broad sampling of behavior.”

California sea otters once numbered 20,000 before they were driven to near extinction by fur traders at the turn of the century. The population had numbered almost 1,900 in 1989, but a count this spring showed a 10% decline to 1,678 otters. Benz said scientists are not sure whether the decline is real or a result of faulty counting techniques.

The California commercial fishing lobby contends that the sea otter population in Northern California is recovering and objects to the transfer of more of the shellfish-eating animals to the waters off San Nicolas, a prime abalone and sea urchin fishery.

“The more there are out there, the more they eat,” said Diane Pleschner, a contributing editor of a commercial fishing trade industry publication.

Plus, tagged otters from San Nicolas have been sighted off other Channel Islands, officials said. Pleschner said the Fish and Wildlife Service should keep animals at San Nicolas and out of other commercial fisheries.

“If they transfer more out there, we lose shellfish resources,” Pleschner said.