California Sea Otter

1. California Sea Otter * Kelsey Johnson

2. Information - Characteristics • otters rarely leave ocean or estuary during their 10 to 20 years of life. • They have air-bubble-trapping fur -- the densest fur on Earth. • Each square inch of their bodies is covered with 600,000 to one million hairs. An entire human head has only about 100,000 hairs. • Length California sea otters: 4 feet; Weight 45 lbs (females); 65 lbs (males). Lifespan 10-15 years (males); 15-20 years (females) • Sea otters spend more than a quarter of their day cleaning and rubbing air bubbles and their own body oils into the fine under-fur that trap the bubbles. • .sea otters’ skin never gets wet.

3. Information – mating • A female mates with a male several times over three or four days. • The male clamps her nose between his teeth. • Sometimes the male can hurt the females nose which can swell with infection and prevent her from eating. Some starve to death after mating. • A baby sea otter or a “pup” depends on its mother for 6 – 8 months. • At 2 and a half months it loses its baby fur and can follow the mother to the ocean to learn how to forage and hunt • A pup picks up it’s taste in food from it’s mother. • The mom and pup stay together and the mother is fertile again and a male becomes interested.

4. Information - Eating • They keep their body temperatures at 100 degrees (F) . To be able to do that they have to eat one quarter or their weight everyday. • For humans that would be a 160 pound person eating 40 pounds of food daily • They use their bellies as dinner tables. And They break up their food by pounding it against a rock or glass bottle they put on their stomachs. • They eat more than 40 different animals. For example: abalone, sea urchins, crabs, and clams. • To find that food, they can dive 350 feet deep and hold their breath for five minutes.

5. Information - Habitat • They live on the coast of California. • California sea otters live at sea, near rocky shores, or in estuaries, such as Elkhorn Slough in Monterey Bay. • They are capable of spending their entire life at sea, but sometimes rest on rocky shores. • California otters often prefer kelp beds, probably because of the protection and food resources they provide. • Sea otters love to float at the water's surface, lying on their backs in a posture of serene repose. They sleep this way, often gathered in groups. These charismatic animals often float in forests of kelp, or giant seaweed, in which they entangle themselves to provide anchorage in the swirling sea.

6. Why is this species becoming endangered? They’re a sentinel species. They use them to monitor the health of the California costal community, they find diseases in the sea otters that wouldn’t occur in a healthy system. Seventeen percent of sea otters die from brain disease caused by a single-cell deadly parasite, Toxoplasma gondii. The immune systems are unprepared for the assault History; Humans killed nearly every California sea otter when they hunted them for their fur in the 1700s and 1800s. In the 1900’s, sea otters drowned in oil spills and fishing nets. Now; Sea otters still face threats from humans. Oil spills, other chemical and biological pollutants that contaminate the water they live in and the food they eat. Oil coats their fur and destroys the blanket of air that keeps them warm. They become so cold that they die. In California, great white sharks are sea otters’ primary predators Humans kill sea otters unintentionally -- by hitting with them with boats or entangling them in fishing gear -- and intentionally, by shooting them.

7. Sea otter deaths. Shows the percentage and causes of deaths for sea otters.

8. What has been done? • The international fur seal treaty of 1911; protects sea otters from any commercial harvesting. • In 1984 , California prohibited commercial fishers from setting their nets in waters 90 feet deep or less which is the range most sea otters hunt for food. It reduced the number of sea otters tangling and drowning in nets. • There are many organizations, researchers that helps the California sea otter and sea otters in general. For Example: • www.otterproject.org/ & • www.defenders.org • California taxpayers must contribute a minimum target amount each year to keep the Sea Otter Fund alive.  In 2009, that minimum is $262,500.

9. Saving the species My View • I didn’t really know what I would do to help save these species. There are a ton of ways that determine a sea otters death. Even though there are some organizations for California sea otters. I’d still create another one. Although it would be about taking care of them and making sure their environment is safe for them to be in. We’d try to take the ones that are out of place and take it to a type of veterinarian that will try to see what is wrong with the otter. Also cleaning up on the beaches that they’re near. Pollution is never good for sea creatures.

10. California Sea Otter

11. Bibliography http://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/sea_otter.php www.seaotterresearch.org/ http://www.seaworld.org/animal-info/info-books/otters/habitat-&-distribution.htm http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/sea-otter.html