Hanging with Sea Otters

Hanging with Sea Otters

Sea Otter Photographs for Sale

  On the tours that I lead up in Alaska the wildlife is often a big draw. Every week we come across a plethora of charismatic megafauna, aka really cool big animals. Encounters with humpback whales, bald eagles, killer whales, and brown bears are usually at the forefront of everyones mind when the trip starts. And when we come across those animals it is easy to fall under the spell of their charisma. However it is a slightly smaller marine mammal that can melt the heart of just about everyone who encounters it…the sea otter (Enhydra lutris).

  Covered in extremely dense fur, about a million hairs per square inch, these aquatic mammals of the weasel family stay warm by trapping air underneath their coat. But it is this same feature that drove early settlers to hunt these sea otters to the brink of extinction. Russia fur traders were prevalent in Alaska’s forming years because of the number of otters. However in 1867 the otter population had plummeted and seeing no further use for the land Russia sold it to the United States.

  However the hunting did not stop with the handover to the U.S. In fact it intensified until 1911 when there were so few otters left that hunting them became unprofitable. That year the otters were finally given full protection under a law signed by the U.S., Great Britain, Russia, and Japan called the Fur Seal Treaty.  In 1960 there was an estimated 2,000 total sea otters. Fast forward to the mid 1970’s and the population was up to an astounding 150,000. Chalk this one of for successful conservation.