Are you a Pacific Coast Sailor?

[Macblaze]

Originally Posted by Lancerbye

We have a number of Sea Otters up in our area on Vancouver Island. They are nice to watch so long as they stay in the water or on the rocks near shore. They are not so nice when they climb up on the docks or into boats and use these places as their own personal bathrooms. I like watching them.

I'm going to guess based on location and behavior you are talking about river otters. Quite the little varmints but cute nonetheless. Sea otters are bigger and more likely to be floating on their back in the bay than up on a dock. Then again, who knows...I saw a video of one on the beach in Cadboro bay not that long ago.

[Paul Elliott]

Originally Posted by Macblaze

I'm going to guess based on location and behavior you are talking about river otters. Quite the little varmints but cute nonetheless. Sea otters are bigger and more likely to be floating on their back in the bay than up on a dock. Then again, who knows...I saw a video of one on the beach in Cadboro bay not that long ago.

Yes, probably river otters. At least we have river otters here near Friday Harbor (San Juan Island, WA State). Otter families swim off the beach, climb on the rocks, leave their half-eaten fish and crabs on our dock, crap on the docklines, play on our lawn, and catch the trout in our pond. For a while they were living and crapping under the house, until I fixed the screening. I had to rip out and replace the stinking piss-soaked insulation.

But they're really cute, and sound like birds when they call to each other. I'm happy they're here.

[Saleen411]

Originally Posted by Macblaze

I'm going to guess based on location and behavior you are talking about river otters. Quite the little varmints but cute nonetheless. Sea otters are bigger and more likely to be floating on their back in the bay than up on a dock. Then again, who knows...I saw a video of one on the beach in Cadboro bay not that long ago.

We have river otters here in DB......WOE be to the unfortunate homeowner whose dock is adopted by otters to be the community litter box.

Did you know that river otters don't crap in the water? Nooooo, they're much too good for that....they have to crap on LAND or some poor bugger's dock or yard. My river otters swam from some distance too....just to crap on my dock to piss me off....they also have a preference for cleats and coiled lines.

[smac999]

they are currently a huge problem up here. getting into all the docked boats. too many of them I guess...

[Steve Bean]

Native Americans lived here and harvested abalone and many other animals and plants for THOUSANDS of years. I don't think they exterminated anything, and I'm pretty sure they didn't collect anything in commercial quantities to ship overseas to "earn a living." When the Russians came for the otters is when things went awry. The anti-otter rant sounds to me like the lament of someone whose commercial harvest of urchins is seen as suffering competition from animals who survived well without exterminating anything until Europeans came.
We have a number of sea otters here in Monterey, some of whom were born and raised right in the harbor and are completely unafraid of humans. We have kayakers and stand-up paddlers by the dozens practically every day. I've seen otters climb into empty dinghies and onto occupied paddle boards , and into my canoe while underway, looking for towels or T-shirts to steal. I have a picture of one going after my life jacket. (I wasn't wearing it.) I've never heard of them defecating out of the water.

[Scout 30]

Originally Posted by Bill Seal

The first time I see a sea otter with an ab measuring stick I might agree with you, but right now, the only abs in Monterey Bay are safely tucked away in cages in farms. The "cute" otters eat all the juvenile abs before they have a chance to procreate. 50 years ago, we had an abundance of the tasty little snails, due to the fur traders harvesting all the otters a hundred years earlier.
If there was a furry little predator munching up all your conches, you might have a different viewpoint.

The fundamental problem is thinking that they're your abalone. They're not. They are a part of nature the same as the otter who has just as much right to them as you do. More so as far as I'm concerned because the otter only takes what he needs to survive. People take all they can get & then send it off to Asia for profit. For far too long people have justified harming the environment for profit.

[Baba Buoy]

Hold on there Don CL, most of what you said about sea otters is wrong. I grew up in Santa Barbara, majored in Aquatic Biology at UCSB, been an active diver in California for 40 years and know a little about the critters. There were no sea otters off of SB before 1970's; they only rarely cruised by after that time, even now. Sea otters caused the abalone and pismo clam population to vanish. I know of only one area south of Morro Bay where abalone survive in deep cracks in rocks. Pismo clams larger than a couple of inches quickly become lunch. Some sea otters are now sickly due to starvation. Native americans actively hunted sea otters. Maybe this is why they were able to have had some abalone to eat. Studies of indian mettens suggest populations of invertebrates fluctuated a great deal. Population boom and crash of sardines and anchovies are now known to be a natural cycle. Also, sea otters don't eat small sea urchins, not much there (large lobster east small sea urchins - there should be an upper size limit on them!). Wife and kids loved otters, I don't.

[groundtackle]

Pretty good first post.

[bailsout]

Otters are abundant in Morro Bay.

[Steve Bean]

"Natural cycle". That's a good term. It reminds me of the phrase " the balance of nature." Balance sounds nice, but the scales can tip pretty far to one side or the other at times. Cycles.

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by Baba Buoy

Hold on there Don CL, most of what you said about sea otters is wrong. I grew up in Santa Barbara, majored in Aquatic Biology at UCSB, been an active diver in California for 40 years and know a little about the critters. There were no sea otters off of SB before 1970's; they only rarely cruised by after that time, even now. Sea otters caused the abalone and pismo clam population to vanish. I know of only one area south of Morro Bay where abalone survive in deep cracks in rocks. Pismo clams larger than a couple of inches quickly become lunch. Some sea otters are now sickly due to starvation. Native americans actively hunted sea otters. Maybe this is why they were able to have had some abalone to eat. Studies of indian mettens suggest populations of invertebrates fluctuated a great deal. Population boom and crash of sardines and anchovies are now known to be a natural cycle. Also, sea otters don't eat small sea urchins, not much there (large lobster east small sea urchins - there should be an upper size limit on them!). Wife and kids loved otters, I don't.

Well, as a fellow alumnus of UCSB, there is nothing you claim that I can find evidence for, except for cycles in certain fish showing up off the coast, but I'll look, just to be sure. I do know what animal I cut up at the museum and surfers at Campus Point (UCSB) reported otters out on the rocks before dawn in the 70s. Maybe they were lying. But some of the things you are bringing up are not linked to otters but pollution and bacterial infections. With your degree in aquatic biology you must know about the bacterial infection that swept the islands clean of abs in the 80s when there was not one otter out there. There is no evidence that otters caused abalone or anything else to vanish. If anything has decimated pismo clams which live deep in sand, it is people, not otters. And people are still digging up clams off the beach. Sickly sea otters, that depends on where you are. Monterey Bay? Most sickly sea otters are sick due to pollution and infections. Native Americans ate a lot of abalone (I've seen the middens too) but without guns I doubt they were able to make a dent in the otter population. Otters were decimated to the point of extinction by Russian hunters in American ships. In fact most of the Native Americans were also decimated about the same time as the otters, so they really missed out on the boon offered them by those helpful Russians! I have seen otters eat immature urchins and even starfish. Like any predator that is a keystone species, like wolves and caribou, you must know that they do not wipe out their prey, in fact they help keep them all healthy.
However I do certainly get it that you don't love otters. I am guessing you are an urchin diver?

https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.a...D=34413&inline
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_ex...s-78-feb10.pdf
https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Conserva...alone-Diseases
Sea Otter | Basic Facts about Sea Otters | Defenders of Wildlife

[Jim Cate]

another bit of anecdotal evidence: Back in the late 60's or perhaps early 70's, I was a member of a group that used to go to a beach in Monterey Bay and dig Pismo clams. We did it for a number of years, and it would take us individually between 15 minutes and a half hour,near the bottom of a decent tide to collect our individual limits of 10 clams each.

Then everyone celebrated the sighting of some sea otters in the bay; we were happy that they were returning, 'cause everyone loves sea otters! The next season we went back to our beach. We were surprised that the beach was literally littered with broken Pismo shells. We didn't get the meaning of this for a while, but after well over an hour of digging, we collectively found ONE legal size Pismo. ONE! WTF?

The next time we went, this story was repeated, except there were fewer shells on the beach.

This hardly constitutes a scientific population study, nor would the evidence stand up in a courtroom, but it seems kinda likely that the otters were getting them before we could. We gave up that enjoyable and tasty pastime in frustration.

No idea what happened to the various populations there, for eventually we sailed off into the sunset, but it left an indelible memory relative to balances in food chains. No doubt that there are other reasons for population shrinkage, but that one sure looked obvious to these amateur observers.

Jim

[Steve Bean]

Farmers used to plow the beaches with horse-drawn rakes for Pismo clams to feed animals. Pismo clams were harvested in large quantities for sport and commerce.

[Cheechako]

Speaking of river otters, we were anchored at the very end of Pipestem Inlet on the outside of Van Isle. Having morning coffee in the cockpit and a family of river otters entertained us for an hour sliding down the steep bank and going back up to do it again and again. It was hilarious...

[buzzstar]

Like I said in an earlier post in this thread, I am waiting for sea otters to be blamed for global warming/climate change. They are definitely busy little creatures, particularly those found in California. They may also have nearly wiped out the pelicans too. I will also say this again: There are too many people, not too many otters. Anyone know if the abalone population on the central Baja Pacific side is still thriving and feeding millions of Japanese, or has that been wiped out by otters too?