Visiting the Canadian cousins of Monterey Bay’s sea otters

Since 1984, Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sea Otter Program team has worked to understand and protect southern sea otters (Enhydra lutris nereis). The population has slowly recovered from near-extinction in the early 1900s to become an icon of California’s Central Coast. Northern sea otters (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) have a similar story on the Southwest Canadian Coast: After going locally extinct in the early 1900s, they’ve been reintroduced and are expanding their range.

 Today, the Hakai Institute is studying how the presence of sea otters is changing kelp forest ecosystems in a marine protected area along the British Columbia coast. This summer, Aquarium Sea Otter Research Coordinator Michelle Staedler and Senior Research Biologist Jessica Fujii traveled to Calvert Island to help monitor northern sea otters. Michelle shares her insights from the expedition.

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Calvert Island and the Hakai Institute field station. Photo by Grant Callegari

The pilot banked the small plane, flying up a narrow waterway at the upper end of Calvert Island. Jessica and I saw below us a floating dock, several boats and red-roofed buildings nestled among the trees. This would be our home base for the next two and a half weeks.

Our destination: Hakai Institute’s Calvert Island Field Station, a coastal research facility 400 miles a northwest of Seattle. The only way to the island is by boat or float plane, weather permitting—but the frequent fog and storms don’t always cooperate.

Winter Sea Otter Research on the West Coast of Canada from Hakai on Vimeo.

Sea otters are handy with tools

What makes people different from other animals? Scientists used to think the ability to make and use tools was a distinguishing characteristic. That changed in the 1960s, when Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees using sticks to fish termites out of mounds. Now, crows, dolphins and sea otters make the short list of creatures that use tools.

Sea otters dive in shallow coastal waters to collect hard-shelled prey like sea urchins, mussels, abalones, clams and snails. Some shells, like the calcium carbonate armor that protects snails, are harder to crack than others—so otters sometimes use rocks as anvils to break them open.