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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the EcoNews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, executive director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And I'm joined by my friend and colleague Jen Kalt, director of Humboldt Baykeeper. All right, Jen, we are more in your world today because we're talking about salty sea life and in particular sea otters. And we have two great guests to tell us about sea otters and to talk about potential reintroduction efforts here on the North Coast. First we have Andy Johnson with Defenders of Wildlife. Hey Andy, thanks for coming on the show.

ANDY JOHNSON:

Hey Tom, thanks a lot.

WHEELER:

And then we have Chanel Hason from the Elakha Alliance. Welcome to the show, Chanel. Thank you. Happy to be here. All right. Chanel, I'm going to start with you. Tell us about the Elakha Alliance because it's a pretty interesting nonprofit group that is all about Sea Otter. So, so tell us about your organization and how it was formed.

CHANEL HASON:

Sure, I'd love to. So the Elakha Alliance was formed in 2018 officially by tribal non-profit and conservation leaders with a shared belief of returning sea otters back to the Oregon coast. And basically this idea of returning sea otters to the coast was founded 20 years ago by the late David Hatch, who was a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indian. So he came up with this idea of returning sea otters back to Oregon after he found the word Elakha in a Chinook jargon dictionary when he was naming a boat he was building with his son. And then that led to all this activism and questioning and reaching out to different scientists and researchers about what happened to sea otters, why aren't they here, and why we should really bring them back. So that's kind of in a really quick nutshell who we are. And so we've got an amazing board of, what I told you, tribal non-profit conservation leaders working towards this effort of returning them here to the coast.

WHEELER:

I'm always so inspired when I hear about groups like yours that have that great integration of environmental and tribal interests. That's always something that we're looking to do within our own work and you've done it. So a lock Alliance, really cool work. Check them out. Andy, I understand that you have been working on sea otters for a very long time. Tell us about your career and your interest in sea otters and what defenders defenders of wildlife, which I'll always shorten to defenders for those listening. Tell us about your work at defenders, trying to bring back this species.

JOHNSON:

Sure. Well, Defenders is a national non-profit organization devoted to protecting and restoring imperiled wildlife and habitats across North America. And I've been working with Defenders for about three years, but for about 40 years, I've been working with sea otters. A lot of that time has been in zoological settings, so aquariums, but I worked for 20 years managing the sea otter research and conservation program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And that was really an opportunity, sort of like Chanel, where to just focus on the one species, but do it in a very, we like to say, a sophisticated way and really deal with all the issues relating to the species. So everything from wildlife response and rehabilitation of stranded animals, to field research, to in-house research, to legislative issues and so forth. And so during that time, we sort of got this idea that sea otters were struggling to expand their range into their historical areas where they were before the fur trade. And maybe we could reintroduce some of these animals to these zones where they really have a profoundly good effect. And how would we go about that? So we've been thinking about that for a long time. And in the meantime, groups like the Elakha Alliance has come along and other groups have sort of joined in to think about this idea of reintroducing sea otters and what it might mean.

JEN KALT:

So a lot of people don't realize that sea otters used to actually live throughout the west coast, really. Can you talk a little bit about their historical range and how they were extirpated from northern California and the coast of Oregon?

HASON:

So sea otters, a lot of people don't know that they ranged all the way from Baja, California, Mexico, all the way up the entire Western Pacific across to Japan. So researchers estimated about 150,000 to 300,000 sea otters once occurred in that connected population. And then basically in a snap of a finger due to the fur trade, about 99% of that entire population was decimated. Just killed off for their fur, which was the most valuable fur in the entire world at the time because it's so thick, it's the densest fur out of any animal on the whole entire planet. So it's very soft. So that's basically what happened. They were across this whole entire coastline and they are not a migratory species. So they haven't just naturally repopulated much of the coastline that they once lived, which is hence why humans need to come in and help with these translocation efforts.

WHEELER:

And so I understand that they evolved together with the coastal life of the West Coast and their absence has now been felt. Andy, can you talk about the importance of sea otters and what their absence means for our ocean ecosystems?

JOHNSON:

Yeah, I'll mention first that the catastrophic loss of sea otters happened at the same time basically as kind of catastrophic treatment of local indigenous peoples, coastal indigenous folks, where the hunters came in with enslaved native Alaskans to the Northern California coast and California in general and just started hunting sea otters and really sort of taking over these areas of the coast that had been in relatively good balance with the people who were living there at the time. And they were just remarkably efficient at killing sea otters in California, Oregon and everywhere else. So as Chanel mentioned, it was like a snap of the finger. It was a very short time period where these sea otters were almost wiped out completely. There were about seven remnant populations, one of them in the Central California coast along the Big Sur coast. And from there, that population of a few dozen animals has grown to about 3,000 animals in California. So what we see is along the Central coast of California, despite some other ecological challenges, the population has been having a very strong effect that sea otters tend to have in those populations as a keystone predator, a top predator. They kind of keep the balance of all the sea creatures in that area, in those near shore areas. So the kelp can grow and flourish, provide nursery habitat and other habitat for many, many species. We also are certain now that they inhabited estuaries along the coast of California and probably all the way up the coast. So as we've seen them repopulate in an area like Elkhorn Slough in the Monterey Bay, that habitat has restored itself as sea otters have re-inhabited those zones. And we know that thousands of sea otters probably lived in San Francisco Bay. So just that idea that this important predator was wiped out completely, drastic changes occurred in those near shore habitats, overgrowth of certain species came into effect. And probably the fisheries that we think of as very important today for urchins, for abalone and other things only really came about because sea otters were wiped out. So we would like to see some of that balance restored and we think we can help sea otters get back to some of these areas where they were historically and continue to have those positive effects.

KALT:

So we really can't talk about sea otters without talking about the recent changes to the kelp forest and also abalone populations. So can you talk a little bit about the importance of the kelp forest to the ecosystem? So we have a top predator, the sea otter, but then the kelp itself is such an important keystone species for so many different critters. Can you talk a little bit about that all the different creatures that kelp supports? Chanel? Yeah.

HASON:

Kelp forests are some really amazing underwater ecosystems. It's one of the most biologically productive ecosystems in the world. So they're found in shallow water by the dense growth of several different species of kelp. They look like plants, but they're actually just a large brown algae. And many species of fish use kelp forests as nurseries for their young, large megafauna like gray whales feast upon mycid shrimp from kelp forests, marine mammals, seabirds. It's just, think of the forest we have in land. Obviously in Oregon, we have lots of forests on land. And so everyone's very accustomed to understanding that aspect. Just think of if the entire forest at a park, say that you visited, was just decimated by some beetles or something. That's kind of what is happening to our kelp forests, but with sea urchins eating the kelp because their predators are missing. And I want to also talk about another predator that was kind of helping out the sea urchin population while sea otters have been missing, and that's the sunflower sea star. Pycnopodia is their scientific name, which you'll hear a lot of people talk about. So there are efforts to help restore the sunflower sea star population that was taken out by a sea star wasting disease in 2013 through 2015. Also in like a blink of a finger, 99% of that population was decimated and hasn't rebounded yet. So now we have two top predators missing from the kelp forest ecosystem, mostly in Oregon and California, that are causing this huge trophic cascade effect of an imbalance, which is why it's so crucial that we need to do something to help counterbalance that.

WHEELER:

So Chanel, you work for an organization that unites tribal interests, environmental groups together for sea otters. I imagine that the loss of sea otters has also been very meaningful for your tribal partners. Can you speak about what their loss has meant for tribal culture? Were sea otters ever used in things like regalia or were there other cultural uses for sea otters for tribes along the Oregon coast?

HASON:

Yeah, so definitely their sea otter pelts were used in regalia for many coastal tribes. There's about six different terms and indigenous languages for sea otter. So we know that it played a part in all of their cultures. Specifically for the Elakha Alliance, we have two members from the Siletz tribe on our board. Peter Hatch, who's the son of David Hatch, is one of them. And then we have the chief of the Kokowel tribe, Jason Yonker, and the chief of the Confederated Tribes of Kus, Lower Umpqua, and Sayusla Indians, Doc Slider as well. So I'm not from indigenous descent, so I can't speak on behalf of them. But I have a little excerpt from Peter and Robert, our other Siletz tribal member, and Doc that, if you don't mind, I just read really quickly that kind of helps summarizes. So since the beginning of time, when our newly created people's footprints first marked the sands, we coexisted with Elakha. The stories of our ancestors instruct us to recognize sea otters as one of our respected kin, our cousins, as it were, and that preserving that kinship and all of our relationships to the natural world will help us forever enjoy the bounty and abundance that the ocean has to offer for our sustenance and for our prosperity. I think that that sums it up better than I could ever, you know, quote them. But yeah, they do have really strong cultural significance to sea otters, so it is like bringing back a family member for these tribes.

WHEELER:

Well, that was absolutely beautiful. Thank you for reading that. So now that we know the importance of sea otters, both culturally and to our ocean ecosystems, let's talk about the need to reintroduce them to areas where they are currently missing. Andy, what are the efforts underway? Who's thinking about this? Who's moving reintroduction efforts forward? What's on the table here today?

JOHNSON:

Well, I think Chanel can speak to the ALACA Alliance, which is really focused on this issue of restoring sea otters to the Oregon coast. In California, sea otters, the subspecies, southern sea otter, is listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened. So there's actually a different kind of different situation that we're looking at. The Fish and Wildlife Service has a mandate to what they call recover listed or endangered species. So the southern sea otter, there's a whole recovery plan for it. And we've always been talking about the health and the welfare of this population in terms of its recovery. And what we've seen over the last 25 years now, the population has grown a bit, but it's grown within a very narrow range. So it hasn't expanded southward much in the last 25 years. And for longer than that, it hasn't expanded northward. So it's still the population still south of San Francisco Bay. And the reasons for that are many, but one of them is that great white sharks tend to bite things at the surface and sea otters rest and sleep at the surface and even feed at the surface. So we've seen that a lot of sea otters that come ashore dead have bites from great white sharks on them. We don't believe that the sharks eat the sea otters. No one's ever cut open a white shark and seen a sea otter, but we do see a lot of sea otters coming ashore with white shark injuries. So we think they bite the sea otters, realize that they aren't a seal or something that they really would like to consume, and they let the otter go. But unfortunately, it's a fatal bite for the otter.

WHEELER:

EcoNews Report. Talking about sea otter reintroduction, potentially here in Humboldt County.

JOHNSON:

So at any rate, what we are really hoping to see is that with the management idea for sea otters is that they would expand their range into their historical habitat and they can't seem to do that in California. So what management opportunities do we have to look at? Well, we talked about this idea of reintroduction. There's sort of two things. You can either take animals from the current part of one part of the range and move it to an area where they were historically. That's been done on a number of occasions with some fairly good success. Or we've been looking at this program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium where they've used live stranded orphaned sea otter pups who have come in, been cared for to a point where they can be put with a surrogate female and raised like a normal pup would, and then released into a wild area. And what we've seen is those animals do survive with a high rate of success. They grow up, they reproduce, and they start having the profound effects that we like to see sea otters have in those habitats. So that's sort of the concept is that we can take some of those animals, put them into areas beyond the white shark gauntlet in South San Francisco and find these areas where sea otters can re-establish themselves, start having those positive effects on the ecosystem, have positive effects on things like tourism because people like to go see sea otters, and eventually restore the health and productivity of some of those systems. So it seems like a great idea and we're working closely with the Elakha Alliance and other partners to see if we can make that happen.

WHEELER:

So Chanel, let's talk about reintroduction efforts in Oregon, something that your organization has been pushing for. I understand that you have two different subspecies of sea otters in Oregon. Has that complicated or changed the way that your organization has thought about sea otter reintroduction?

HASON:

Yeah, so there are two subspecies, the Northern Sea Otter and the Southern Sea Otter. And so, as Andy mentioned, the Southern Sea Otter is only located in California and the Northern Sea Otter is found in Washington North up in British Columbia and Alaska. And so, 90% of the world sea otter population lives in Alaska. So, that's about 30,000 plus sea otters. So, they're doing well. Their habitat is huge and expansive and they're very happy up there right now. So, we published a scientific feasibility study last year with the top six sea otter scientists in the world about the feasibility about them returning to the Oregon coast. And so, we pointed out it's probably best to take perhaps 100 from Alaska and bring them down to the Oregon coast. There's less red tape in terms of bringing Southern Sea Otters, which are endangered and is very difficult to do through US Fish and Wildlife Service. So, that's kind of what we're proposing. Ultimately, it's the US Fish and Wildlife decision where they get their source population. We can just give them our best recommendation. But yes, Oregon used to be a place where Southern and Northern Sea Otters would cross genetics. So, it was kind of like a neat highway for those species once the population was ranging the entire coast back 100 plus years ago. And that was known because their bones were found in shell middens along the Oregon coast. So, it would be really great genetically. Since Andy mentioned, there was about 300 sea otters found in Big Sur after the fur trade. And so, those 3,000 that live there now all come from that tiny genetics from those 300 otters. So, to have some cross genetic diversity would be really, really crucial just for the entirety of the species of sea otters.

WHEELER:

This this story of a very small a very small source population Rebounding and coming back to the north coast is something that we are really excited about and that we have some experience with Roosevelt elk the largest elk we had one tiny population left in in Del Norte and northern Humboldt County and that has been this seed population for Reintroductions all across the west coast and just recently we've had condor reintroductions up here. So something I know from Condor situations from other reintroduction efforts is sometimes you need to kind of get the environment right for Reintroduction a lot of work has been done in northern, California to get rid of lead ammo For example for condors in looking at reintroduction. What what are the kind of ideal conditions? Well, where would we kind of hopefully try to put a population? What are the things that we had looked for in the receiving environment? Andy yeah

JOHNSON:

Obviously, probably the first criteria level we want to look at is the ecosystem, as you say. Will a habitat support sea otters? Along with the Elakha Alliance study, the US Fish and Wildlife Service issued their own federal feasibility assessment about reintroduction. They determined that it seems feasible from pretty much all angles, from ecologically and socioeconomically and legally and in all respects. It's part of the task of these groups to conduct some research to really figure out what are the best areas to target, not just to benefit sea otters, to make sure that they can survive in the habitat, to make sure that there are good contiguous sections of coastline that will support sea otters, but also what communities live along those areas, which communities will be affected or even hard hit by the reintroduction of sea otters. That gets us into the whole discussion of sea otters and shell fisheries, where sea otters tend to consume a lot of shellfish and humans like to go out and harvest those shellfish. We're starting to have conversations with the fishing community to talk about ways that we can minimize or mitigate any potential negative aspects of sea otter reintroduction and foster and promote the positive nature of sea otter reintroduction, which could be spectacular from an ecological and coastal resilience point of view. And obviously, we're also connecting closely with, as the Elakha Alliance has done, with making inroads in terms of engaging with California coastal tribes. Their involvement in this is absolutely critical to help plan and lead these efforts based on their historical knowledge of sea otters, their cultural traditions, and we want to make sure that those aspects are part of this also. It really comes down to finding the right places to do this that will work best. We know there's going to be conflicts. We also know there's going to be enormous benefits as well.

WHEELER:

So, Andy, you mentioned the feasibility study completed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That's why we have these folks on is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is hosting a number of public open houses to discuss potential reintroduction. And we have some coming up in our neighborhood in the coming days. So on June 24th in Crescent City, there will be a meeting at the Del Norte Recreation Department, Gymnasium 1005 H Street in Crescent City from 530 to 8 p.m. In Arcata, we have a meeting at the Great Hall Community Center building, room 206 at Cal Poly Humboldt from 12 to 3 on June 25th. And in Fort Bragg on June 26, we have a meeting from 12 to 3 p.m. at the Noyo Center for Marine Science on 338 North Main Street in Fort Bragg. So I hope our listeners can make it out to those. And if you need that information again, you can go to the Lost Coast Outpost and look at the show notes, and we will have the locations for those meetings set up there. Jen, I think that you had a question next.

KALT:

Yeah. So a lot of our listeners will know that we have a large oyster industry in Humboldt Bay. And as much as I would love to see sea otters in Humboldt Bay, I do have to wonder how that might affect the oyster industry. And so I wanted to ask you, Chanel, I think that the Elakha Alliance has done a lot of outreach to fishermen. And I, I wondered what you have heard from fishermen about their concerns and just what kinds of lessons people have taken from other species reintroductions that might be helpful here.

HASON:

Definitely. So we're not blind to the communities that make their living on the coast. So crabbers, fishermen, shell fisheries. And so we have open communications with all of these industries and we want to work with them, hear their concerns, and try and figure out what's the best practice here for everyone so everyone can benefit once a potential sea otter reintroduction is occurring. We have invested time and money to do specific studies and research. So right now we have a fin fish and shell fishery study, socioeconomic impact happening on the South Coast of Oregon. So that should be completed, I believe in the fall. So there's mixed reviews for people in that industry who understand that over time, the ecosystem will be much more beneficial for their fishery with a healthy kelp forest ecosystem habitat. So more larvae, more crabs, more fish in that area. But it's kind of hard to state that if you just want immediate results. So it will take time. But there are places where sea otters and fisheries work in balance, like Monterey Bay. There's an abalone fishery just right underneath the dock in Monterey Bay that's been there for many years doing just fine. So there's different ways of people may need to adjust their traps or their holding areas for shellfish. And then there's ways we can go about mitigating the cost change for those improvements as well through things like perhaps a sea otter stamp or other methods. But yeah, we want to make this beneficial for everyone. But we know some people will be affected. So we're trying to lessen the impact any way we can.

KALT:

Well, I hope a lot of people go to these workshops and learn about this, but your website has a ton of information. And I did want to ask you something people ask me often, which is, what is the difference between a river otter and a sea otter? Because I swear I saw an otter in the ocean, is what people will call me and say. And so I just thought it would be good for our listening audience to explain that they probably didn't see a sea otter if they were up on the coast of Humboldt or Del Norte or Oregon.

HASON:

Yeah, we get that question or comment all the time, especially in southern Oregon. So despite the name, river otters do feed and forage and play in the intertidal zone. So you can see them swimming in the ocean. I saw a group of four out in the middle of the ocean on a rock when I was scuba diving in Redfish Rocks in Port Orford. So it is a little confusing because they are in the ocean, but river otters eat fish and shellfish as well. Sea otters, it's a very rare occurrence for them to eat fish. So that's another key thing. If you see them eating fish on a dock, a boat dock, 99.9% that's a river otter. River otters also have the same size paws for all four paws. So they are meant to be on land and run around. So if you see something moving swiftly along the beach and running across rocks, that's a river otter. They also have longer tails for balance. If you've ever seen a sea otter walk on land, they have two big back flippers. They're not made for walking on land. They look really uncomfortable and awkward. So that's why they live 99% of their life in the water. It's always fun to see them walking like outside at an aquarium or they just plop themselves on land there. They don't like the land. And also river otters are smaller in size. They're about 30 to 50 pounds and sea otters are 50 to 90 pounds usually. So sea otters are much larger. So that's kind of some key signs that tell the differences.

KALT:

I don't think I've ever seen a river otter floating or hanging out on its back. Is that right?

HASON:

Yeah, that was my other fact I forgot. So river otters swim on their stomachs, so I don't think anybody's ever seen them float on their back. That's just not what they're designed to do. Sea otters mainly float on their back because that's how they sleep, they rest, they eat, all on their back. The only time you'll see a sea otter on their stomach is when they're about to dive down underwater. They're swimming away from something that scared them.

KALT:

That's a pretty telltale sign right there too. Sometimes size is hard to tell that far away.

WHEELER:

Yeah. Well, we are unfortunately at time again, I would encourage everybody to turn out this weekend for the open houses hosted by the U S fish and wildlife service. We have one in Arcata, one in Del Norte and one in Mendocino. I hope everyone turns out for those. You can find the locations on the lost coast outpost.com. Chanel and Andy, thank you so much for coming on the show. I learned a ton about sea otters and I really, really hope that we get reintroduction efforts because I can't wait to see them off of Humboldt's coast. They are so dang cute. Hey, thanks everybody. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you. All right. This has been another episode of the EcoNews report. Join us again next week on this time and channel for more environmental news from the North coast of California.