Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren Bogelbaum. Here. The sea otters are basically
Speaker 1: the party animals of the sea. They're intelligent, rambunctious, chatty, curious, gregarious,
Speaker 1: and they're unequivocally objectively on the definitive shortlist of cutest
Speaker 1: adult animal whoever is keeping track of that inventory these days.
Speaker 1: Their babies are also in the running for cutest baby animal,
Speaker 1: which is saying something as the competition is much stiffer
Speaker 1: in that division. And aside from their sparkling personalities and fluffy,
Speaker 1: grinning faces, sea otters are also the glue that keeps
Speaker 1: their ecosystem together. Sea otters are in the weasel family,
Speaker 1: native to the North Pacific Ocean from California north along
Speaker 1: the Pacific coasts and islands of Alaska and down the
Speaker 1: eastern edge of the Kanchaca Peninsula of Russia. Since they
Speaker 1: spend most of their lives bobbing around in chilly waters,
Speaker 1: using rocks and things to break shellfish open on their bellies,
Speaker 1: and they don't have a bunch of blubber to keep
Speaker 1: them warm like seals and walruses do, sea otters possess
Speaker 1: the densest fur in the animal kingdom. While you and
Speaker 1: I probably have fewer than a hundred thousand hairs on
Speaker 1: our entire heads, that many hairs can be found on
Speaker 1: a single square inch that's six and a half square
Speaker 1: centimeters of a sea otter's body, but what keeps them
Speaker 1: cozy can be a liability in some cases. For the
Speaker 1: article this episode is based on House to Work, spoke
Speaker 1: with Terry M. Williams, professor in the Department of Ecology
Speaker 1: and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz,
Speaker 1: and she said the problem with the sea otters unique
Speaker 1: fur is that it can't get dirty, so they spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time grooming it to keep it clean.
Speaker 1: The exon Veldez oil spill of killed more than a
Speaker 1: thousand sea otters in Prince William's Sound because their fur
Speaker 1: was contaminated with oil. Our team spent months cleaning them.
Speaker 1: The bottom line, though, is oil and otters don't mix.
Speaker 1: Aside from the fact that sea otter fur needs to
Speaker 1: be kept clean and fluffable, or else it stops insulating
Speaker 1: them and they freeze to death, humans have unfortunately noticed
Speaker 1: how luxurious their coats are Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
Speaker 1: the European fur trade decimated sea otter populations throughout their range.
Speaker 1: By the early nineteen hundreds, about fifty California sea otters,
Speaker 1: the subspecies living along the southern coast of California, remained
Speaker 1: in the wild. But thanks to the International fur Seal
Speaker 1: Treaty of nineteen eleven, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and
Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Act of the nineteen seventies, California sea
Speaker 1: otters were able to make a partial comeback. About three
Speaker 1: thousand live on the California coast today. Williams said in California,
Speaker 1: sea otters have reached carrying capacity in Monterey Bay. In
Speaker 1: other words, there's just enough food for the sea otters
Speaker 1: currently living there. For the population to grow, it would
Speaker 1: need to move to a new area. However, white sharks
Speaker 1: are believed to be keeping the otters from moving. In Alaska,
Speaker 1: killer whales have taken out large numbers of the population
Speaker 1: of sea otters along the Aleutian Islands. The picture is
Speaker 1: happier in the Cordova area, where sea otters seem to
Speaker 1: be booming thanks to that nose dive. In sea otter populations,
Speaker 1: it's easy to see that these fuzzy marine goofballs are
Speaker 1: actually extremely important to the ecology of the North Pacific Seashore.
Speaker 1: For starters, their populations help make for healthy kelp forests,
Speaker 1: the dense underwater jungles of tall algile strands the make
Speaker 1: coastal marine ecosystems in the North Pacific what they are see.
Speaker 1: Otters service every part of these kelp forests. Because they
Speaker 1: have to eat a quarter to a third of their
Speaker 1: body weight daily and spend between ten and twelve hours
Speaker 1: each day finding food. Individuals within a population naturally sort
Speaker 1: themselves into specialized eating groups or dietary guilds, the preferences
Speaker 1: for which are asked from mother to pump. Which guild
Speaker 1: and otter occupies has to do with the depth at
Speaker 1: which it likes to find food. Some otters dive deep
Speaker 1: and end up nabbing things like sea urchins and dungeness
Speaker 1: crabs off the sea floor, while others find their favorite
Speaker 1: foods at mid range depths of about forty feet that's
Speaker 1: twelve meters, collecting small shellfish and worms. A third group
Speaker 1: prefers to forage around in shallow waters for snails. In
Speaker 1: this way, a population of sea otters can really work
Speaker 1: the kelped forest at every level, helping it to stay
Speaker 1: healthy and resilient in the way that only a top
Speaker 1: predator can well. One way scientists have helped sea otters
Speaker 1: make a comeback in California is by pairing orphaned otter
Speaker 1: babies with captive surrogate moms that can't be released into
Speaker 1: the wild. For the past thirty years, the Monterey Bay
Speaker 1: Aquarium has been pairing stranded babies with adult female otters
Speaker 1: in the aquariums Sea Autter Program, and the experiment has
Speaker 1: been wildly successful. It turns out female sea otters are
Speaker 1: more than happy to raise a baby that's not their own.
Speaker 1: Since it started, in more than seven hundred adults and
Speaker 1: puffs have moved through the Sea Outer program. Houst To
Speaker 1: Works also spoke with Kyle Van Houtson, a chief scientist
Speaker 1: at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He said, in our latest study,
Speaker 1: we showed that surrogate reared otters in their offspring account
Speaker 1: for over half the population growth in some areas. We're
Speaker 1: just starting to see the extensive and positive impacts associated
Speaker 1: with a growing and healthy outter population. Today, many of
Speaker 1: our state's ecologically degraded estuaries could benefit from sea Otter's return.
Speaker 1: So while we knew this was a great program and
Speaker 1: a feel good story, now we know it's also great science.
Speaker 1: There may come a time when you see more sea
Speaker 1: otters frolicking in the waves off the coast of California.
Speaker 1: But don't get too close, Williams said. Sea otters have
Speaker 1: been nicknamed chainsaws in a Burlepp bag. They have enormously
Speaker 1: powerful jaws, perfect for cracking the shells of clam and
Speaker 1: easily breaking fingers. So as cute as otters look, they
Speaker 1: can be unpredictable and can deliver a really nasty bite.
Speaker 1: Give them wide space in the wild. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article see Honors are the Party Animals
Speaker 1: to see on how stuff works dot com, written by
Speaker 1: Jesselyn Shields. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio
Speaker 1: in partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Clang. Or more podcasts from my
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