Migration of Otters Has Fur Flying

When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service moved a colony of threatened southern sea otters to San Nicolas Island more than a decade ago local fishermen said it would never work out.

And it hasn’t.

Only 16 of the 139 otters remain on the remote island 60 miles off the Ventura County coast. And fishermen say the federal agency has long reneged on its promise to keep the otters from straying into bountiful fishing beds.

“They didn’t care that it was the biggest shell fishery in the state and that sea otters and shellfish don’t get along.” said Eric Hooper, who used to fish off the island.

So when a few dozen hungry sea otters suddenly appeared this spring in a kelp-strewn inlet near Santa Barbara--miles farther south than federal law allows--fisherman were outraged.

Since their arrival at Cojo Bay near Gaviota, these wayward mammals have swum smack into a bitter debate about fishing rights and wildlife protection along the California coast.

Their presence puts them in direct conflict with commercial fishermen and a federal law that 12 years ago posted a big “otters keep out” sign on the coast from the Mexico border to just north of Santa Barbara--with San Nicolas the only exception.

Scientists are troubled, too. They want more otters, but are concerned the animals are expanding into new territory at a time when their total numbers along the California coast are in decline for the first time in 16 years.

Diseases are ravaging otters on an unprecedented scale, scientists say, raising questions about their overall health and pollution of their coastal habitat.

Taken together, those developments are forcing stakeholders in the debate to conclude it may be time to declare the San Nicolas Island experiment a failure and overhaul otter management programs along the California coast.

Fishermen--who compete with otters for prized sea urchins, lobsters and crabs--consider the animals ravenous rivals and a threat to their economic survival. If otters establish a beachhead near Santa Barbara, they predict, it will only be a matter of time before the mammals hop across the Santa Barbara Channel to mow premium fishing grounds before advancing across the rest of the Southern California coast.

They Eat Like Elephants

A month ago, a stray sea otter was spotted near Ventura, said Hooper, who is vice president of the Ventura County Commercial Fishermen’s Assn.

Each day, a 50-pound sea otter eats an average of 17 pounds of crab, turban snails, abalone or nearly anything else that wiggles on the ocean bottom.

“The public only sees them on the surface floating and they look like teddy bears, but they eat like elephants and they have a big impact on other life forms,” said Steve Rebuck, an abalone diver and consultant to the California Abalone Assn.

Consequently, fishermen are demanding that federal wildlife authorities honor their legal commitment to remove the animals--24 otters lingered at Cojo Bay through summer--immediately. They say otters have no business moving so far south, and federal law supports that position.

Under a compromise to balance otter recovery with fishing rights, Congress in 1986 passed a law that forbids sea otters in Southern California, save for San Nicolas.

Otters were allowed to roam unfettered north of Point Conception; fishermen got exclusive rights to the waters south. Any sea otters found in the “management zone” were to be immediately captured and removed, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

But the federal agency has resisted evicting the interlopers at Cojo Bay. Federal biologists insist relocating them will harm the species, and that conflicts with another federal law--the Endangered Species Act. Southern sea otters, found off the California coast, were designated a species threatened with extinction in 1977.

Carl Benz, a federal biologist in Ventura, estimates roughly two of every 30 otters would perish during relocation, unacceptably high mortality for a protected species. Efforts to return the San Nicolas otters to their colony resulted in several deaths.

Even if the otters were moved to the Morro Bay area, where they are believed to have come from, many would likely swim back to Cojo Bay, Benz said.

Instead, the Fish and Wildlife Service held public meetings last month in Santa Barbara and Monterey, seeking advice on how to proceed. Raucous crowds of as many as 100 fishermen attended.

“It’s a Catch-22 situation. There are no easy answers,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley). “We’re very sensitive to the natural environment, but we’re sensitive to the family that depends on fishing, too.”

Losing the Fight Against Nature

At the moment, however, conflict with humans is the least of the sea otters’ problems. The species is caught in a deadly duel with nature. The otters are losing.

After years of robust growth, sea otter populations have been in decline from the Golden Gate Bridge to Morro Bay since spring 1995. In the last three years, the number of sea otters along the California coast fell 11% to 2,114. It is the most significant loss since detailed counts began in 1982, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The offshore otter population established on San Nicolas Island is faring even worse. Of the 139 animals transplanted from the mainland coast to the island between 1987 and 1990, 16 remain there, about half swam back to Monterey, some died and the rest are unaccounted for. The program is widely criticized as a failure.

In the first seven months of this year, 153 dead otters have been identified up and down the coast, equal to the number of carcasses found in all of 1997, said Jim Curland, science director for Monterey-based Friends of the Sea Otter.

David Jessup, senior wildlife veterinarian for the California Department of Fish and Game, said disease accounts for 40% of the deaths in recent years. Sand crabs pass worms that shred otter innards. And a brain-destroying parasite, possibly from cat feces washed from suburbs to the ocean, is taking a heavy toll, too, Jessup said.

“It’s unprecedented in California,” he said. “It’s unprecedented in any wild carnivore species. It’s unprecedented in a marine mammal species. It’s a very unusual pattern of mortality. You just don’t see wild carnivores dying of infectious diseases. There is something inherently wrong with the health of sea otters.”

At the current rate of population decline, Benz said, in three years the Fish and Wildlife Service will be forced to declare the species in danger of extinction.

That would mark a dramatic reversal, because only a few years ago southern sea otters were faring so well the agency was preparing to remove them from the endangered species list by 1999.

At its August meeting, the state Fish and Game Commission decided to begin hearings in December to review long-term otter management strategies to better balance species recovery and fishing rights.

That otters are on the move in California seems certain. After years of absence, several individuals have been spotted in the San Francisco Bay during the 1990s. Strays have been reported as far south as San Diego, including one off the Ventura coast last month.

But the group that arrived at Cojo Bay in the spring--as many as 100 at one point with 24 settling in--likely signals a significant thrust into new territory. Scientists say it conforms to a pattern of otter expansions observed in Alaska, when numerous males discover a new spot and linger for a while before fetching females to colonize the area.

Sea otters are sleek, acrobatic swimmers. They resemble big, swimming cats and scientists say they are close relatives of weasels, minks and skunks.

Otters cling closely to rocky shorelines, spend much of their life floating on their backs and congregate atop kelp in groups called rafts. They can dive 180 feet, use stones to smash shells open and dine on 40 different marine invertebrate species.

There are 12 otter species, including some that live in rivers. Alaskan and Asian sea otters number about 100,000 and are bigger than their southern cousins on the California coast.

The latest controversy is just another chapter in the tumultuous history of the southern sea otter. Scientists estimate they once numbered 20,000 along the California coast but were relentlessly hunted in the 18th and 19th centuries.

By 1938, just 300 remained, hidden by steep cliffs in coves off Big Sur. Their numbers rebounded after a hunting ban, grew until the mid-1970s, dipped again largely due to threats from fishing nets, have been steadily gaining since 1982 and peaked at 2,377 in 1995.

More than any other feature, it is the otters’ luxurious fur that gets them into trouble with humans. Silky and lush--a single square inch of an otter’s coat contains 1 million hairs--otter pelts were prized for coats and traded from North America to China to Europe.

Otters rely on their dense fur to keep warm in chilly waters. Unlike other marine mammals, they lack a thick layer of insulating blubber. To fuel their constant grooming and body temperature, they are metabolic machines, consuming about a third of their weight daily in food. At about 70 pounds apiece, 100 adult males can devour approximately 26 tons of seafood in one month, according to estimates used by biologists.

Their voracious appetite hardly endears the creatures to fishermen. The Sea Urchin Harvesters Assn., for example, circulates a video that portrays the bottom of Cojo Bay crawling with urchins and abalone last year, but stripped clean of the shellfish this summer, allegedly by otters.

Tension between fishermen on the one side and environmentalists and the Fish and Wildlife Service on the other has increased since otters were transplanted to San Nicolas Island a decade ago.

“When they translocated [otters] it made about as much sense as translocating locusts into the wheat field,” said Jim Colomy, a lobsterman who often fishes out of Ventura. “But they were cute, so we put up with it. If they weren’t cute, no one would stand for it. You can’t manage resources on the cuteness factor.”

Fishermen complain sea otters have a competitive advantage. They have no fishing seasons, no catch limits and are in the water around the clock.

“We are measuring lobsters and abalone through all the beds,” said Bob Hay, an urchin diver in Santa Barbara. “When they reach legal size we pick them. But when the sea otter comes through there are no size limits. It is a total takeout. Soon there won’t be any lobsters left or sea urchins.”

Sea urchins--spiny, baseball-size bottom dwellers--are one of the otters’ favorite snacks. Sometimes otter muzzles are stained purple from crunching so many of the deep-sea delights.

One of California’s most abundant fisheries, 18 million urchins were harvested last year and fetched $15 million in sales, chiefly exports to Asia, according to the sea urchin association.

The critters appear in sushi bars as uni. Abalone harvesting has been banned south of Golden Gate since March 1997.

Promises Made But Not Kept

Fishermen are also furious with government agencies charged with otter management. They say the government has failed to keep promises to expel otters from Southern California, most recently at Cojo Bay.

“It always revolves around promises,” said Hooper, the Ventura fishermen. “They told us, trust us, we will have containment crews. Trust us, we will have an 800-number. But then, as soon as they transplanted the otters, you know, the containment crews, they don’t have money for that, and the 800-number, they don’t have money for that . . . . It’s such bad faith.”

Environmentalists contend otters have become a scapegoat for overfishing that threatens marine stocks. True, the otters are voracious, but environmentalists say they managed to coexist with shellfish for centuries before humans arrived.

“It’s easy to put the blame on sea otters. Sea otters do have an effect on these invertebrate animals, but the question is how much damage are 24 animals [at Cojo Bay] going to do compared to all the human damage to fisheries,” Curland said.

Furthermore, recent problems with the sea otters demonstrate the 12-year-old otter-management agreement is obsolete and needs to be revamped, environmentalists say. And as far as the otters are concerned, they ignore the agreement entirely.

“Sea otters don’t read signs. They don’t see a visible line in the water at Point Conception. They are just doing what comes naturally to them,” Curland said.

Indeed, otters have turned the two key components of the law upside-down. They refuse to stay in the only place the law allows them in Southern California, San Nicolas Island. The 16 otters there today are a far cry from the 500 scientists anticipated would live there if the population flourished as expected.

The experiment at San Nicolas Island was intended to bolster otter populations and ensure their survival in case an oil spill or other catastrophe wiped out Northern California’s population. Instead, the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering declaring its program a failure, an important step on the path to reexamining otter management in California.

Further, the translocation attempt on the Channel Island suggests evicting otters from Cojo Bay may meet with the same results. “Moving otters is just like putting water into a sieve. You pour them in and they just keep going back to where they came from,” said Benz, the Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.

Otters will certainly die, too, during relocation, he said, because the Fish and Wildlife Service lacks the money to enforce the no-otter zone south of Point Conception. Although federal law requires the agency to maintain personnel, equipment and training to keep otters out of Southern California, it would cost about $800,000 annually, money that has not been forthcoming from Congress.

For those reasons, the Fish and Wildlife Service is reluctant to round up otters at Cojo Bay.

Environmentalists say the return of otters to shores their ancestors prowled represents perfectly natural behavior. Indeed, they maintain recovery of the species may depend not only on multiplying sea otter numbers, but on expanding their range.

“Things have changed in the environment, and things have changed with the population of otters. Moving otters isn’t a good idea. We need to look farther and consider other options,” Curland said.

Health of Otters a Growing Concern

Indeed, concern is growing among scientists about the health of California sea otters. Odd foraging habits, new patterns of disease and toxic pollution raise questions about the health of the coastal environment:

Are otters seeking new territory as part of a normal growth spurt or are they fleeing unhealthy environments? Are warmer ocean temperatures affecting marine mammals?

Do pollutants weaken otter immune systems, making them vulnerable to disease? Do health problems in otters portend risk for humans who eat many of the same things otters do?

Answers to those questions might be needed to save the sea otter, scientists say.

What is clear is that otters are worse off today than they were five years ago. Diseases are taking a heavy toll, striking all age groups and healthy animals up and down the coast. Warm water conditions related to the El Nino phenomenon earlier this year might also be contributing to an unusually high number of otter pup deaths observed this year.

Samples from dead otters collected along the California shoreline have been sent to laboratories at UC Davis and the federal National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis. Results show three diseases have hit otters hard.

A microbe that attacks otter brains may come from cat feces washed from suburbs to the ocean. Tiny worms transferred to otters from sand crabs are eating the mammals from the inside out. San Joaquin Valley fever, which also affects humans, is killing otters, Jessup said.

But what bothers scientists most is the fact that those diseases have been present in the environment for many years without troubling otters much. What has changed? Scientists suspect toxic contamination is beginning to impair the animals’ ability to ward off disease.

It would not be the first time pollution has been linked to compromised immune systems in marine mammals. Contaminated herring has been linked to sickness in gray seals in the North Atlantic and pollution-induced immune system damage has been identified in beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River.

In California, otters from Monterey Bay and Moss Landing show concentrations of tributyl tin, a chemical used in boat paint, at concentrations high enough to cause illness, but not death. Similarly, concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and pesticides have been found in blue mussels at a concentration likely to be harmful to otters or other animals that eat them, Jessup said.

Against that backdrop, scientists caution now is an inappropriate time to interfere with sea otters.

“We’re worried about range expansion [of otters] to the south. We need to put more effort into understanding health problems of sea otters before we start manipulating them some more,” Jessup said.

“Everything we thought about sea otters has been wrong, and it shows we don’t know as much as we think we do. We need to reevaluate where we are with sea otter management. Many basic assumptions made in the past have been wrong. We need to step back and reassess what we know,” he said.

Sea Otters

Two dozen sea otters found in forbidden waters off Santa Barbara County, along with a colony that has strayed from San Nicolas Island off the Ventura count coast have triggered acontroversy over wildlife protection and fishing rights. Meanwhile, disease is ravagingCalifornia’s otters, and scientists wonder if it plays a role in otter migration.

Sea Otter:

Length about 41 inches

Features: blackish brown with webbed feet

Habitat: kelp beds along rocky coast

* Source: Friends of the Sea Otters