Over the summer, two male sea otters were spotted near Cannon Beach, Oregon, a couple of hours west of Portland. They floated in shallow waters and climbed on rock outcroppings below the grassy bluffs of Ecola State Park, a picturesque stretch of the Pacific Coast that has served as the backdrop for scenes from The Goonies, Point Break, and several other blockbuster movies. The sight was a rarity given that the marine mammals have been virtually absent from the state’s waters for more than a century—to the detriment of coastal ecosystems.
Sea otters play a major ecological role by controlling shallow-water herbivores such as sea urchins. Without ample predators to control their density, urchins and other herbivores can decimate the underwater kelp forests and seagrass meadows that provide habitat for a multitude of marine species, from crabs and sea slugs to herring and rockfish.
“They have a disproportionately large effect on the ecosystem relative to their abundance,” Chanel Hason told a local news outlet when the otters were spotted. Hason is outreach director at the Elakha Alliance, an Oregon nonprofit formed by tribal leaders and conservationists with the goal of restoring sea otters and, consequently, robust marine ecosystems to the state.
They were valued because it is the softest, richest, most beaitiful fur that exists in nature. From the 1700s on, all along this coast all the way up to Alaska, the commercial furt trade exhausted their numbers.
Peter Hatch, the group’s secretary and a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, added that the last recorded sea otter that called Oregon home was killed before his grandfather was born.“They were valued because it is the softest, richest, most beautiful fur that exists in nature,” he said. “From the 1700s on, all along this coast all the way up to Alaska, the commercial fur trade exhausted their numbers.”
Since then, sea otters have made a comeback in many areas, but the biggest remaining gap in their historical range stretches from San Francisco Bay all the way through Oregon. Only in rare cases do otters like the two spotted last summer wander more than 100 miles down the coast from established populations in Washington.
About a decade ago, abnormally warm waters in Northern California decimated purple sea urchins’ main predator, a type of sea star. As a result, the urchins were left to devastate kelp forests unchecked (see “Kelp Wanted”). “Without these top predators,” says Hason, “sea urchins are overpopulating and overgrazing on kelp, which is basically the foundation for our underwater forests and home to thousands of species.” Purple sea urchin numbers have boomed by up to 10,000 percent in places, and some areas have lost more than 90 percent of kelp coverage. Hason adds that, as someone who is working to restore sea otters, the summer sighting was for her “a little glimmer of hope of exactly what we could see in the future here off of our coast.”
In 2020, Congress directed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to explore the potential to reintroduce sea otters to the Pacific Coast given their significant ecological role. The Elakha Alliance and other conservation groups, such as Defenders of Wildlife, are supporting the effort, along with several federally recognized tribes. The service has identified Oregon and Northern California as the most beneficial areas to potentially bring back sea otters. It has since held community meetings to gather perspectives and share information, although it has yet to officially propose a reintroduction or specify possible sites, and it continues to evaluate relevant issues—including the potential downsides of restoring the population of a predator with such a big appetite.
A major factor in any reintroduction would be competition between sea otters and commercial, tribal, and recreational fishing interests. Since sea otters lack blubber, they are voracious eaters, consuming up to 30 percent of their body weight daily—far more than seals and other marine mammals. And in addition to preying on sea urchins, they eat a multitude of other bottom-dwelling ocean invertebrates, including valuable crabs, clams, abalone, and other shellfish. The potential harms to local interests will make it crucial to mitigate the impacts of a reintroduction. Cooperative or even compensatory approaches could help make reintroduced sea otters an asset to—or at least avoid making them a liability for—local communities, namely commercial and other fishing operators.
Reintroduction Roulette
Historically, sea otters lived in shallow nearshore waters stretching in a broad arc from Japan to Mexico. Indigenous peoples long held the animals in high regard, trading their furs or using the pelts to make treasured robes. By the early 20th century, however, trappers had wiped out many populations, and as few as 2,000 survived worldwide in scattered colonies. The end of the fur trade and widespread regulation, including through the Marine Mammal Protection Act, reduced pressure on the animals, and reintroductions of translocated sea otters helped modern populations rebound.
In North America, sea otters are categorized into two subspecies: northern and southern. Northern sea otters are found off the Alaska coast and as far south as Point Grenville, Washington. The 1960s translocation of about 400 sea otters to Southeast Alaska grew rapidly, resulting in a population that exceeds 22,000 today. In contrast to the continental West Coast, the region has vast high-quality otter habitat, including many inlets, bays, estuaries, and islands with shallow waters. That reintroduction effort, while a boon for otters, has severely impacted crab fisheries, a precedent that worries fishermen over future reintroduction plans. In general, however, most other translocated populations have grown much more slowly, especially along the West Coast where linear shallow waters are bound by the continental shelf, restricting otter movements to either the north or south. A 1969–70 translocation of 59 sea otters to Washington, for example, has today become an established population of nearly 3,000.
Not all reintroductions, however, have been successful. In 1970–71, the reintroduction of 93 northern sea otters to the Oregon coast was a total failure, for reasons that are unclear. (The Fish and Wildlife Service has noted that “there is no clearcut explanation for why the Oregon reintroduction failed while others succeeded, and it may have just been a matter of chance.”) Despite such failures, northern sea otter populations have rebounded. Today, nearly 100,000 inhabit nearshore U.S. waters, with the vast majority in Alaska.
Southern sea otters, also known as California sea otters, are found off the shore of Central and Southern California. Once thought to have gone extinct during the fur trade, several dozen otters were discovered in 1938, in the mouth of Bixby Creek, near Big Sur. All southern sea otters living today are descended from this single colony. The tiny remnant population grew to approximately 1,000 by 1977, when the Fish and Wildlife Service listed the subspecies as threatened. A major factor in the listing decision was the fact that the species occupied less than 200 miles of coastline and therefore was vulnerable to a mass-mortality event such as an oil spill. Today, there are approximately 3,000 southern sea otters.
Threats persist to northern and southern sea otters, including the potential for oil spills, entanglement with fishing gear, and predation by sharks and orcas. A reintroduction plan, therefore, might aim to establish new populations of each subspecies, and it seems plausible that it would involve southern sea otters given their more precarious status.
Indeed, shark predation now prevents southern sea otters in Central California from expanding northward to San Francisco Bay and beyond. Establishing additional populations in Northern California and Oregon would leapfrog the open, shark-infested waters that are most dangerous to otters, boosting the subspecies’ recovery and eventual delisting prospects, making it an attractive conservation option. It would not only expand the southern sea otters’ range and numbers but also connect populations of the two subspecies in the mammal’s historical transition range. A past sea otter reintroduction by the Fish and Wildlife Service to California waters, however, does not necessarily inspire confidence—especially with fishing interests.
Taxing Translocations
In the late 1980s, the Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced 140 southern sea otters to San Nicolas Island, the most remote of the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California. That effort, however, was ridden with conflict and ultimately deemed to be unsuccessful.
The service contemplated an experimental population of southern sea otters in 1982 as a way to provide redundancy in case the primary colony near Big Sur suffered from an oil spill. That year, Congress amended the Endangered Species Act and created section 10(j), authorizing the reintroduction of “experimental” populations of listed species to proactively expand their range and numbers. The amendment allows for tailored regulations that seek to avoid unnecessarily burdening local communities and to generate buy-in for the species’ recovery. The Marine Mammal Protection Act, however, did not make any such distinction. So in 1986, Congress passed a law permitting under that act the establishment of a new experimental population of California sea otters.
Through the 1986 law, Congress aimed to strike a compromise between wildlife conservation and economic pursuits. Most importantly, it sought to “prevent, to the maximum extent feasible, conflict with other fishery resources”—namely, commercial fishermen. It did so by clarifying that, as long as commercial fishing operations were acting legally and avoided the near-shore waters around San Nicolas Island, they would not be punished for unintentionally harming or killing sea otters from the experimental population. The law also directed the service to cooperate with California state agencies and to actively relocate wandering otters back to suitable waters, which would not only help keep the animals safe but also minimize conflicts with fishing vessels. In short, Congress aimed to insulate the fishing industry from regulatory liability, perhaps even motivating them to become a partner in conserving the species—or at least avoid becoming an enemy of it.
We can’t control what species or how much of each species otters will eat. Urchin divers, clam divers, and crabbers will be most greatly affected…Each fishing operation is a small business that supports Oregon families.
The reintroduction to San Nicholas never went smoothly. Many of the otters died during capture and after release, and mortality persisted despite later attempts to reduce stress on the animals. Keeping otters near the reintroduction area proved similarly difficult. After three years and a high rate of dispersal, only about 15 of the translocated mammals remained in the waters surrounding the island. The service eventually abandoned the reintroduction, and the state soon followed suit. By 1999, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed declaring the relocation effort a failure, mainly because fewer than 25 sea otters remained in the relocation zone. Additionally, it noted that the San Nicolas population was not adequately isolated from the Big Sur population to survive a large oil spill, further translocations posed too great a threat of mortality, and otters required a much larger range to recover their populations.
After several more years of planning and environmental review, in 2012, the service terminated the San Nicolas Island translocation program. According to the terms of its original plan, the service should have returned all remaining otters from the experimental population to the parent colony in coastal California. But it failed to honor those terms, and the San Nicolas population eventually grew to nearly 150.
Today, all southern sea otters are now fully regulated by both the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act anywhere they are found. That means that no matter how responsibly commercial fishing operators are pursuing their catch, there is no longer any liability protection afforded to them if they unintentionally harm a southern sea otter, which can be punished by fines or prosecution.
Following the termination of the program, local commercial fishing interests sued, arguing that the Fish and Wildlife Service had effectively pulled the rug out from under them by establishing an otter population on San Nicolas Island while exposing them to liability under the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act. The district court and the Ninth Circuit disagreed, siding with the service. The case illustrates many of the continued concerns over potential sea otter reintroduction and management.
Cooperative Conservation?
As part of its information gathering for a potential future reintroduction of sea otters, the Fish and Wildlife Service received nearly 600 written comments from 16 community events it held up and down the Northern California and Oregon coasts during the summer of 2023. A pointed comment from one respondent noted that the service “failed to honor” its past management plan in Southern California. “I was there—broken promises and lost fisheries are the trademark” of the service, it read.
That broken compromise has eroded trust, complicating today’s efforts to recover sea otters. The Fish and Wildlife Service claims it is “extremely unlikely” that the total costs of a new sea otter reintroduction would outweigh the overall benefits. The upsides include not only strengthening marine ecosystems by bolstering kelp and seagrasses—which would eventually support myriad other species and make coastlines more resilient to storms and climate change—but also the potential boon to ecotourism from wildlife watching opportunities. (In British Columbia, the willingness to pay for the chance of seeing sea otters nearly rivals the value for whale watching, the top driver of wildlife tours.) Yet the service has recognized that some groups like the shellfish industry could bear the brunt of those highly concentrated costs, especially at first. Sea otters select large, energy-rich prey, sometimes eating commercially valuable shellfish for nearly half of their diet.
Several tribal nations in California and Oregon have supported reintroducing sea otters, citing the expected ecological benefits. Leaders of two coastal Oregon tribes have even written to the interior secretary calling for a reintroduction within the next five years. Two tribes in Washington, however, have been less enthusiastic about the idea. Concerns they have cited include the lack of a plan or mechanism to eventually control populations of reintroduced otters and the anticipated harms to crab, clam, and urchin fisheries for commercial, cultural, and subsistence uses.
“We can’t control what species or how much of each species otters will eat,” a commenter from a Newport, Oregon, open house, noted. “Urchin divers, clam divers, and crabbers will be most greatly affected. Management of these fisheries will be incredibly complicated with sea otters in the picture,” adding that the effects could be beneficial for some fisheries but “terrible” for others. “Oregon has a few very sustainable and well-managed shellfish fisheries that sea otters could threaten,” it continued. “Each fishing operation is a small business that supports Oregon families.”
Several factors could help to lessen the blow. For one, while Dungeness crab fisheries are important to both Oregon and California, most of the catch comes from the open ocean, beyond typical sea otter habitat. For another, if reintroduced otters can help restore kelp and seagrass habitat, then it would benefit many commercially valuable finfish, such as rockfish and cod. That’s relevant to some of the area’s shellfish harvesters because many fishing operators participate in multiple fisheries, meaning that those increased benefits could help compensate for the costs imposed. A main challenge, however, would be to help affected groups navigate the almost certainly rocky transition that would come in the short term. And unfortunately, when it comes to red sea urchin and other shellfish, including abalone, reintroduced sea otters would leave a significant mark in terms of predation.
Still, a few notable actions could help. Under the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service could tailor threatened species rules of southern sea otters to provide regulatory relief. When it comes to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, however, Congress would likely need to intervene, as it did in 1986, to provide similar relief for commercial fishermen. Making such provisions would be a logical first step as a precondition of any reintroduction, partly because it would signal to the people likely to bear costs that their interests are not being ignored.
Beyond that, creative compensation approaches could be explored. There are parallels from past efforts—a prominent one being Defenders of Wildlife’s scheme to compensate area ranchers for livestock lost to wolves when the carnivores were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s. Adapting this model for sea otters, however, would involve some unique challenges.
“One thing that’s different from wolves and livestock,” Jane Bacchieri, executive director of the Elakha Alliance, says, “is that you’re not dealing with private property here, you’re dealing with a commons” in coastal waters. That may create more complexity when it comes to identifying harms. Bacchieri highlights the need for continued research to understand what the impacts, both positive and negative, might be from a reintroduction over time, adding that her group is not opposed to approaches that incorporate compensation in the case of negative impacts. Elakha Alliance has brainstormed ideas with several partners, including creating an “otter stamp” to channel revenues to affected communities, or perhaps a license plate, although Bacchieri says that finding a method that generates sustainable funding would be key.
Avoiding Alienation
It may be asking too much to hope fishing interests become the friends of sea otters. But as with wolves in the Rocky Mountain West, efforts to reintroduce species should recognize that the vast majority of the people who benefit will not be the ones who suffer the collateral damage, and they should aim to find creative ways to compensate the groups who are harmed. Because the truth is that if the federal government alienates fishermen and other affected communities, they will make the quest to conserve and recover sea otters that much more difficult up and down the Pacific Coast.
